The Way The Window Faces
by tajuki
Summary: "He stood at the window looking to the empty east. He did not look for dawn; east was only the way the window faced." T. Harris. Memory persists in the great and small things. A Sirius Black story.
1. God Grant Me

Disclaimer: I own my plot and some characters. The canon and their places belong to JK Rowling and various companies. I am making no money from this story. The title comes from a scene in Thomas Harris's _The Silence of the Lambs. All of the italicized lines in the story are lyrics from U2's __Walk On. _

*The phrase "to take a piss" means to bullshit. 

*I realize that my interpretation of some characters (Peter mainly) can be deviant from canon. I am just really tired of the way they are represented in fanfic, even in canon. I have decided that I would like to take these characters in a different direction. Even though they may seem very deviant from canon now, as the story progresses they will meld with canon. 

Author's Note: This is a companion piece to my series, _It May Be Raining, The Road To Nowhere and _Where Madness Gives A Bit. _It is as story that encompasses the tales of characters in the rich historical period of the 1960's through the 1980's. Other pieces to be published related to this series are: _The Unsung Past_ set in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and chronicles the struggles of the Founders, and _Bells In Winter _to come later, which will tell the historical tale of those that lived through the Second World War and the downfall of a powerful evil that enveloped a continent. But now please enjoy _The Way The Window Faces.__

Chapter One

God Grant Me

_And if the darkness is to keep us apart_

_And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off _

_And if your glass heart should crack_

_And for a second you turn back_

_Oh no, be strong_

_Walk on…_

_"Oh, that I might have my request, _

_That God would grant me what I hope for,_

_That God would be willing to crush me,_

_To let loose his hand and cut me off!_

_Then I would still have this consolation—_

_My joy in unrelenting pain…"_

_Job 6:8-10, NIV _

                I see it only now as I pass along the crowded streets of a neighborhood that I have not visited since my childhood. There were people in the streets, blood, bullets, chaos, wailing. It was a dark day for the Irish people. I guess that's why I have not visited this neighborhood since my childhood; it's easier to forget that which is not in front of you. 

                But I see it now, as I am confronted with the memory of it. Most people would say they are defined as a person, as a human with worth, through the experiences in their life. In my own life, I now see, I am not composed in person by the things that I have lived through or have endured, or have wished to forget, but by the people that surrounded me. I am who I am, I now acknowledge, because of the friends I have known, and because of my enemies. I am who I am because I have loved a woman and lost her. I am who I am because I had a friend whom I worshipped, because of a friend who humbled me, because of a friend who betrayed me, because of a father who left me, a mother who stuck by me. And I now live for only one person; a boy who has just recently gotten to know me and is just learning how to trust me, and I him. He is the reason that I find myself today in front of the house of one of my childhood friends. 

                It looks as if it will rain. 

                I ring the doorbell and turn to look down the littered and gray street waiting for an answer. 

                The street ends at Free Derry Corner. There is a shabby terrace that looks Victorian on that corner. I stare at it dumbfounded. It's surreally astonishing to me what sort of lines one's memory can draw to the past in one split second. I remember it as it had been in 1972, the sounds, the smells, the tangible tension in the air. This was the barrier where the rule of Britain clashed with that of the IRA. The barricades are, of course, gone now. It looks bare and as a reflex my mind draws them in as if they should be permanent fixtures. I see it as I remember it. And Bernadette Devlin is still standing there urging the marchers to stand against the blatant disrespect that the Paras were heaping upon them, Sunday protesters on a peaceful Civil Rights march. 

                Now it stands as a wide, grassy intersection with a lovely ramp leading up to the city walls that were ancient as I remembered them, now too old to consider ancient even. 

                I listen and I can hear her charged voice, the youngest woman ever elected to the British Parliament, MP for Mid-Ulster. She was twenty-one and electrified me with her conviction. But as I strain to catch her fading words I realize that they had faded long ago, the sounds I am hearing now are of children down the street playing at football. This is Falls Road and I have been here before. 

                But now as I look around I am overcome by the feeling that in my long absence from this area of my childhood and of my past and of my person someone has taken the landmarks and the memories and brushed them under the rug of perpetual change. A slap in my face. 

In revolt to this assault on memory a thousand defining moments, called memories, rush back into my head. I have time. I give them all consideration. 

                But if, like I had just now discovered, it had been the memory of people and not of events that have defined my existence, I guess I would have to start with my father and my first memories of him—my first memories of anything, really. 

                They must have been happy memories. But I seem to have colored them and seen them only as foreshadows to coming pain. I regret that this has been my first and most enduring memory of my father, but one cannot choose the things they will keep with them when they are as young as I was, and that was probably around four for five years old. 

                It was my birthday. 

                I know this because there were candles and a cake and my mother was there. I waited impatiently with a butter knife clasped in my hand because I wanted to put the frosting on the cake myself. 

                It was just me and my mother. 

                My father was not here. And my sister was gone too. She was three years older than me. Our father's favorite was always Cassie. I guess this was only because I was young. Sometime later I had convinced myself that it was because he just enjoyed being around my sister more than me. But now I realize that that was just the healthy surmising of an angry child. 

                They had adventures together. 

                Today they had left with ice skates in tow. 

                Our house was big when we lived there in England. But I wouldn't remember much of it after these few memories I have. But I don't regret not knowing it better. It had a pond at the back of it. Now it was frozen over in the wintertime. 

                I didn't even mind that they had been gone a long time. They usually were. And Cassie would come back and tease me about the adventures that she had had while I was here with mother. But I liked the stories and listened to them all. 

                She came back this time in the arms of my father. She was blue and wet and had fallen through a thin patch of ice. 

                There was a lot of frantic discussion when my father had carried her in. Mother insisted on using a quick charm to sustain her temperature so they could find her some proper treatment. There's no way a five year old could comprehend the seriousness of this discussion, and it would be only years later that the conversation would ever have a full and tangible meaning in my mind. But I had listened all the same. 

                He had been suspicious of her talents, always. It was his greatest hope that his children would not be inflicted with such gifts as she had. He did not understand them and insisted that her interfering would only cause more harm. 

                Mother would only insist in an accusing tone that she knew what was best for her child. 

                I have no memories of Cassie after that moment. I do remember a grave on a rainy day. And that same day father had been drinking. He was not in my memory of the grave on the rainy day. He must not have attended the funeral. 

                We returned home and my mother took my wet shoes and socks to the fire to dry. Wiping my nose, she muttered about the un-Christian way in which a man could ignore the funeral of his child. I thought he might just be too afraid to go. I went and I was afraid. They put her in the ground and then we left her there. I wondered while my mother muttered whether Cassie was afraid when they put her in there. 

                It's odd that what I remember most about the next scene was the furniture. I had been in that room many times before. It was a big house. But I knew how to navigate that house through many games of hide and seek. His office was on the third floor and I was nearly out of breath because I wanted to see of I could take the steps two at a time. I managed to make it, two at a time, all the way up to the landing where his office was. 

                The door was unlocked and I went in. 

                I guess we never heard anything because he had done it when we were outside in the rain putting Cassie in the ground. 

                But the furniture seemed darker now as I remember it. Everything seemed almost black, like all of the suits and dresses and hats and umbrellas that I saw outside in the rain this morning. The mahogany of the desk, the leather chair and sofa, the dark and cool grate of a fireplace that hadn't been used, the rug and the blood pooling from my father's right ear. It was all a dark black color. The whole scene could have been black and white for all I could tell. 

                We had another funeral and I had to stand out in the rain again and everyone wore black again and we had to put father in the ground next to Cassie. But mother was not muttering when she took my socks and shoes and hung them to dry by the fire. She was crying. 

                We didn't live in that house anymore. 

                We moved to my mother's town and I liked it better. We had a flat above a bakery that smelled of bread in the morning. And I grew to love Belfast. 

                But my father didn't come with us. He was in the ground with Cassie. I figured that he must have known that they would put him there if he shot himself dead. He wanted to be in the ground with Cassie, wanted it more than being here with mum and me. He was never a terrible man. He had loved me, I guess. But I only remembered that he left me. My mother never told me that it was any different. I guess she felt like he had left her as well. And he had. There was no mistaking that fact. Even a five year old understood it. 

                No longer on the stoop of the house on Falls Street I was wandering down to Free Derry Corner. The house disappeared behind me when I turned the corner. Up Rossville Street and I could see the rubble barricade. I saw a lot of things. It was to be my education of the world. The true and harsh world—the world as it really was. As I walk this street now it is hard to imagine it without the sound of high velocity bullets whizzing by. Many young students and workers had collected here. I had witnessed with one of my closest friends the death of someone close to us both. His brother died here, a few blocks from where he lives today. The death of Aidan is a more vivid and shocking memory and forced me to appreciate life lived for something and spent needlessly. His death shaped more of who I am than that of my own father. 

                But more died here. Yet, now that it is cleared of its dead bodies and the houses have fresh coats of paint and new flowers planted in the window boxes, the images, ghastly and vivid; the picture of Barney McGuigan's body by the phone box, lying in a pool of his on blood cannot be covered by the new exteriors. It only causes me to revolt further into memory. 

                But memory turns to more pleasant images now. The boy whose brother died there on Rossville Street, I met on a train. 

                I was to go to school. And I was eager to. It was a school, to my understanding, that my father would not have approved of. I was magical, my mother told me. And that suited me fine. It flew in the face of what my father had wanted for me. But he didn't get to consider my future as I saw it, he had left. My mother was the one that stayed. And she was pleased that I had been accepted. And so I was pleased too. 

                But as I boarded the train that would take me there, I realized that I would be going it alone. My mother could not come with me. I would only have my kitten and my violin, and nothing else I knew, nor did it look familiar to me. 

                My kitten, Aristophanes in my pocket, my violin under my arm and my trunk dragging behind me, I said goodbye to my mother with a brave face and watched her walk away. 

                He was asleep in one compartment by himself and my kitten's gray head peeked out of my pocket and hissed softly. I crept in and sat down, careful not to wake him. And if he did wake, I would got to another compartment and find another place to sit, as he was here first. But he didn't wake for a while. 

                I was staring, indulging my rude inclinations of which my mother would have scolded me for if she had been here. In revolt of the fact that she wasn't I scrutinized this boy for hours and he did not wake, which only made my study of him that much more thorough. 

                He wore glasses. I wondered if he got teased in school for them. Robert at my old school was teased for his glasses. A big kid broke them one time when he was pushed to the ground. But I didn't care. I wasn't picked on when they could get their hands on Robert. My mind started to wander to my new school, and were there big kids there too that wouldn't like me? And would this sleeping kid be pushed to the ground more than me?

                I would like to think that because he wore glasses he would be the target of any bullying that may take place at our new school. But maybe he ran fast like Robert did, and then I would be the one that got it more often than not. 

                I looked to my violin and wondered if I could set it on fire or throw it off the train. Could I convince mum that it got stolen? I would shove it under my bed when I got to my new school and I would never take it out. Michael, a big kid at my old school, he was named after Michael Collins, he told me. And he said that he could kick my Protestant violin-playing arse. And he really could, that's why I believed he could kick my Protestant violin-playing arse. He had proven that he could on a few occasions. I was glad Michael wasn't going to be going to my new school. 

                Aristophanes arched his back and hissed again and I looked away from my cursed instrument. 

                "I don't think he likes me," the sleeping kid said. But he wasn't asleep anymore and he was staring at my kitten, which was really misbehaving and hissing and his fur stood up. 

                "Don't you like cats?" I asked. 

                "Oh sure," the kid said, taking his glasses off and wiping them on black robes. "But I haven't met one yet that likes me."

                I hid an inward smile. If he were afraid of cats then surely any Michaels at my new school would like to push him down more than me. Maybe I could even hide my violin before anyone saw it and then I wouldn't get pushed down at all. And my mum wouldn't even notice that I hadn't been practicing. 

                It all sounded good. But in practice I knew it was a hopeless idea. 

                "Do you play that?" the kid said replacing his glasses and eyeing the case at my feet. 

                A sinking feeling and I realized that even the kid that was afraid of cats would make fun of me. And my mum was wrong. I wouldn't make any friends here. I wondered how fast she could be here to take me home if I told her I had broken my arm or had a seizure. 

                "I play a little. But I'm planning to burn it when I get to school," I said playing with my kitten. 

                "Don't be stupid," the boy said glaring at me. 

                I blinked and kicked the violin under my seat. "Are you in your first year?"

                The kid glanced up momentarily as he opened a thick schoolbook. "Yes. And you?"

                I set my kitten down on the seat next to me and nodded. "Did people at your other school give you a hard time because of your glasses?" I asked, immediately regretting it. He closed his book and stared at me hard. 

                "Depends on what you mean by a hard time. I was usually only teased by my brothers. But then they were the only other students that went to school where I did."

                I furrowed my brow. "And where was that?"

                "At my home," he answered looking at me as if I were a simpleton. "My mother taught me."

                This piece of information sent me into all kinds of imaginings. I wondered why my mother didn't teach me and why I had to go to school with a bunch of big kids who wanted to push me down because I played the violin and didn't cross myself when I prayed. But I guessed that his mum probably didn't have to work and he probably had a father who did. I wish his mum could have taught me too. 

                We both looked up when a boy with red hair and wide eyes came into our cabin shutting the door quickly, crawling into the baggage hold above the other kid's seat agilely. I stared in wonder until a second later another boy, a very angry rough-looking boy, came in after him. He looked around and noticed only the boy in glasses and me. 

                He turned to me and asked, "Where did that redheaded bastard go to?"

                I must have had a gaping expression, as I didn't answer him. He was about the same height as I was. I noticed this only when he hauled me out of my seat by the collar, his nose inches from my own. "Would it help if I said please?" he asked menacingly. 

                I pointed to the baggage hold and was immediately released. 

                "Give it up, Nancie-coward!" he bellowed, jumping onto the seat next to my compartment mate who sat unconcerned and looking on the scene with bland curiosity. "I won. Give me my money!" he continued, yanking the redhead roughly down by the back of his shirt. 

                I was even more frightened to see that the boy he was bullying was at least three inches taller than him and just as mean looking. He hopped down and made for me. 

                "Why did you rat on me, you sorry bastard?" he asked. 

                Backing away until the back of my knees hit the seat, I answered, "Because he said please."

                The redhead who had me threateningly by the front of the shirt and the mousy-haired boy behind him both laughed. 

                "Are you taking a piss?" the redhead asked. 

                I blinked. "No…No, I'm not taking a piss," I answered shakily. 

                The boy behind him laughed. 

                The scene dissipated with another boy entering the compartment. I thought this might have been a gang that I had unfortunately gotten on the wrong side of. He was apparently their look out as he came in, pushing his round glasses up the bridge of his nose and saying, "Mundungus, Peter, Prefects! Come on!"

                I was mercifully released. The redhead and the mousy-haired boys left with the boy with the glasses. I heaved a sigh and sat. 

                The kid across from me smiled and shook his head. 

                "What?" I asked angrily. "I think that kid really wanted to kill me."

                "No," said the boy with a superior shake of his head. "He wanted what was in your pocket."

                I felt in my coat pocket and with a sinking feeling I noticed that my father's watch was gone. I always kept it in my pocket, but not because it held any sort of meaning for me. It was just something I had picked up off of his desk when I found him with the gun and the blood.

                The kid began to laugh. "My name is Remus," he said. "I'll help you get it back if you like."

                "Yes, thank you." I sat down feeling sheepish and ill suited for this new school and its alien ways and even more alien students. "I'm Sirius."

                Even now, I have to laugh when I think about that moment on the train. I look up and find that I have made my way to the old Bogside Inn. This is where the Provisional IRA had its headquarters then. In this town and in that moment, I know that is when I grew up. 

                But I did a lot of growing up before that. In many ways my friends each taught me something. But I think it was Peter who gave me my earliest education. 

                And with a bloody nose came the realization that I would one day have to fight for myself. Peter was a tough kid. He was not the biggest, nor was he the strongest, but he knew what God gave you fists for, and he was quick. 

                So it came down to it, one day soon after that train ride. 

                Remus walked calmly up to Peter and asked for my father's watch back. 

                "Sorry, mate," Peter said with a shrug. "I've sold it. Nasty luck. Had I known you wanted it…" He looked to his redheaded companion and smiled as both neared Remus menacingly. "Well, no. I still would have sold it. So, fuck off, squitty little bastard."

                I would always remember with little ease the unconcerned way with which Remus cocked his head to one side and said, "Well now, God doesn't like a dirty mouth."

                Mundungus laughed. "Is this kid for real?" he asked Peter. 

                Remus narrowed his eyes at the boy like a stern teacher. "Of course I am."

                Peter pulled out his wand and neared. "I'll say it again. Fuck off!"

                I was astonished at the speed of things. For a rather meek, soft-spoken and even tempered boy, Remus was quicker than Peter. But he didn't reach for his own wand. I don't think that it was a natural response for any of us, seeing as how we were all so young. I don't even think Peter knew how to use his. No, Remus deftly jerked Peter's out of his hand and threw it over his shoulder. The other hand flew at the boy in a balled fist. 

                When both boys jumped on Remus, I knew grudgingly that I should be helping out. It's funny how you can't remember some people's names, or some memories have been completely erased from your mind, but I can recall with crystal clarity the impossibly girlish scream that came from Mundungus when I landed on him. In a tangle of arms and legs, I couldn't tell which side came out more bruised. 

                When James attempted to break it all up, I thought that Remus and I were just as good as frog guts. But he was surprisingly objective and restrained Peter who had a smashed pair of glasses in his hand while Remus staggered backward with a cut on his brow. 

                "Remus," I said. I cannot now explain why I had. "Your glasses…"

                "That's fine," he said. "I only need them to read." He wiped blood from his forehead and glared at Peter who struggled against James' grip while Mundungus stood dumbly by, bleeding from the ear.   

                Hindsight is useful only in idiotic postulating and so I'll put it to its only use: we should have left at that moment if not sooner. 

                Transfiguration hardass, McGonagall would not have made it her opportunity to take us all down to the clink…or more generally, her office, for dolling out punishment. 

                But she did. It's anyone's call whether that was a lesson learned or not. 

                We all thought twice about swearing in front of Remus. 

                I learned never to antagonize a Liverpool native with more of a right hook than a command of the third grade reading level. 

                And later in detention, we all learned that James had a near criminal intelligence, Remus new how to make gelignite bombs and other specialties of the mob, and Peter could lift Dumbledore's glasses right off of his nose while he slept. As I looked around us that night, bent over a scrub brush and soap bubbles on the Trophy Room floor, I knew we had the makings of a fantastic and terrible friendship. 

                And in some way, the memory of it hurts more now than the memory of my father. 

                I look up in surprise to find that I am not now standing by the Bogside Inn, but instead my feet have found an all the more painful place to rest outside of St. Eugene's Cathedral. Anyone would wonder at why I would find such a place painful, yet it is the people associated with the place that saddens me, and that sadness deadens my heart with a dull ache that's mournful. I think of Remus' face when he turned to me, quietly whispering while the priest was in the middle of Sunday Mass, "The Paras were seen on the Craigavon Bridge moving into the city. Aidan saw them on Lower Road."

                I made to say something, but when I looked up, father O'Neil whom I'd met just outside came in and whispered into father Daly's ear. I knew it was much of the same that Remus had just told me. 

                It was only one day in the life of a city that had seen so much life and death and revolt and blood, but it stands out in my mind and I am struck numb even now, twenty-two years after the bullets have stopped flying, the memory of it still rivets me to the spot. 

                But I cannot visit that memory now. 

                And there are others that need my attention and so I give myself over to them one at a time, sitting on the steps of St. Eugene's Cathedral. 

"Remus?" I asked one night when he had just come back from the hospital wing—the first night that I began to worry about him—it was dark and James and Peter had long ago dropped off to sleep. 

                "What?" he asked in a tired voice. 

                "What is that picture over your bed?" I really didn't care who it was. I knew he was someone that Remus admired, and he was American, he dressed like it. But I wanted him to tell me so that I could hear him and know that he was okay. Yesterday I visited him in the hospital wing with Peter and he was bruised and he had a cut from his ear to his collarbone. Peter insisted that it was a fight Remus had gotten into that he was trying to keep secret. Peter vowed to find the boy who beat Remus and "make him sorry". He turned earnestly to me after we had left Remus and said, "Someone probably did it because he's a Mic. But he's still the nicest Mic I know and he helps me with my history studies."

                I disagreed. "Remus isn't a Mic," I said. "He's from Northern Ireland like me."

                Peter smiled. "I thought I was the stupid one of the bunch," he said, ruffling my hair as if I were his kid brother. In actuality I was a month older than him. I was just smaller. 

                "I'm not stupid and Remus isn't a Mic!" I insisted. 

                "Look," Peter said, quieting me in the hall. "I don't care if he is or he isn't. Are you going to help me find out who did this to him?"

                "How should I know who did it?" I asked helplessly. 

                "I didn't say you did know. I said we should find out. Are you in?" Peter asked with little patience. 

                "Sure. I want to help Remus. But what if he doesn't want any help?" I countered ineffectually. "Maybe we should ask him first."

                "You are stupid, aren't you?" Peter asked. "He's not going to tell us what happened. You know who I think it was?"

                "Who?" I asked with mounting terror. I could almost smell a new and more unpleasant detention on the breeze of the near future. McGonagall would have us polishing every suit of armor in the school if we were caught in another brawl for sure. 

                "That racists bastard Snape," Peter said with a militant glint in his eyes. 

                I wondered how he had come to this conclusion. I didn't see Remus losing a fight to Severus Snape. It would have been like Peter loosing to…well…me. 

                And maybe if I got Remus talking about other things, he might tell me who put him in the hospital wing for three days. 

                "It's Martin Luther King, Jr." Remus answered. 

                "Oh," I said, as if that cleared everything up for me. But I didn't want the conversation to end there. I felt the persistent need to know more. Even if he wouldn't tell me how he got the scar on his hand, or the one on his forehead, or the cuts and bruises that now colored him, I wanted to know something about him. He was really the only one I could consider my friend. I mean he helped me get my father's watch back, which Peter had returned along with his repaired glasses. And he didn't make fun of me because I played the violin or because my mother wrote to me once a week, even though the other boys didn't get letters from their mums half as often. And I realized that I was only beat up when I was unlucky enough to be cornered when Remus wasn't around. That must mean he was my friend.

But friends were supposed to know things about each other. Mundungus and Peter could even finish each other's sentences, even though Mundungus was a Hufflepuff and didn't even see Peter that often anymore.

                James was different, of course. He was everyone's friend and no one expected him to remember even their names. He had a way of making conversation about nothing to someone he'd only met five minutes ago. And that was fine with him. 

                "Who's Martin Luther King, Jr.?" I asked. "A singer?"

                "Don't be stupid," Remus said and I heard him roll over in his bed. "Go to sleep, Sirius."

                I expelled a frustrated breath of air. "Okay."

                There was quiet and I looked at the poster over Remus' bed. There was a microphone in front of him and his mouth was open. He looked like he was singing. Another banner under that poster said _Derry Civil Rights Association. I guessed maybe he was someone in Londonderry that Remus knew. _

                "Remus?" I asked. 

                There was a deep breath and then quiet laughter and then: "What, Sirius?"

                "Is he the priest at your church?"

                He laughed louder now as if he could not help himself. "I don't think he's Catholic, Sirius."

                "Then what is he?" I asked irritably. As often as I was laughed at by James and Peter, you'd think I was used to it. But never Remus. 

                "He's a civil rights activist in America."

                "Do you want to be like him?" I asked, faintly admiring his sharp cut suit and the one shiny cufflink that stuck out on the wrist of his raised hand. I thought Remus could look like him. 

                "No. He's dead," Remus said decidedly. "I don't want to be a civil rights activist," he continued. "I want to be a priest."

                "Why?"

                "Because I don't think God's given me as many chances as He had for me to waste them. The way I see it, my life belongs to Him and I can't think of anyone better to serve," Remus said uncomfortably as if he wished to end the conversation. 

                "Did Martin Luther King, Jr. waste his life?" I asked dumbly. 

                "No," Remus said sadly. "He was a great man. A lot of people admire him for giving his life for the cause."

                "What cause?" I asked. 

                "For the cause of freedom." Remus shifted again and I could tell he was tired. He wanted me to shut up, but I had too many questions.

                "Isn't America free?" I thought this sounded reasonable. 

                "For some," Remus answered patiently. 

                "Does the Derry Civil Rights Association think Martin Luther King, Jr. was like them?" I asked more tentatively. 

                "What?" Remus said. 

                "Do they think they're not free?" I elaborated. 

                "You would say that everything is equal. But that's because you were raised on the majority side. Did you ever look around Belfast and wonder why the Catholics don't live where you live, and why all of your police are Protestant?"

                "No," I answered honestly. 

                "The Derry Civil Rights Association just wants to make things a little more equal is all," Remus explained. 

                I thought about this for a minute. I hesitated, and then: "Remus?"

                "What, Sirius," Remus sighed. 

                "Are you a Mic?"

                Things were very quiet for a while. I thought that now Remus wouldn't want to be my friend. 

                But a moment later he said, "Yeah, I guess you would call me a Mic."

                It's really hard to believe that things turned out the way they do. It's hard to believe people forget the things they do, gloss them over, rob them of their value. 

                I feel this very keenly. Because I cannot forget.             

                Maybe it is because this is the first time I have visited Derry since the streets ran with blood and the alleys rang with cries and shouts and bullets, but I cannot understand why people would transform a city that meant so much in that one day…in those few hours…with those thirteen martyrs…one of whom I knew. It becomes a grim, sad, aching reality—the new paint and the flowers in the window boxes. It's denial of a powerful thing…a moving thing. So much of me was changed here. It is an injustice that no one else feels such respect and I am indignant for old Derry that I thought I knew. 

                But I stop. 

                A cloud has moved in front of the sun. I do not notice this because I am looking at the sky. I realize that my shadow is missing as I am looking down at the street, at my shoes. The wind picks up and I know rain isn't too far off. But I race on in memory and trudge slowly in step, going nowhere with great certainty and purpose. From the steps of St. Eugene's where Aidan's memorial service had been held along with the other twelve I find myself in front of a deserted building. The Rossville Flats became my first acquaintance with this city and its struggles, my own struggles, and Ireland's. 

                Testimony to all things changing, this place has changed too. 

                Push past a door hanging on one hinge. It gives instantly. 

                I am immediately drawn to a place I have longed to be many times before. There is an alleyway behind these flats where five thousand people were housed at one time and no police had ever penetrated. It was a haven for Civil Rights, vigilantes, weapons collectors, the IRA (both Provos and Officials), and many Catholic families, members to all of these factions. 

                The alley is the same, I see as I stumble out of the deserted flats. And I am relieved to see it so. It is gray and wholly unremarkable in anyway. And here is where I kissed the first girl I loved. 

                I want to stay here even though I know it will rain. In all of the memories I have, this one, and this girl had never been anything but a treasured denizen of my mind. Other memories bring with them sad realizations of a person who left me, betrayed me, gave me up for lost, thought me capable of murder and worse, but she never did. In my mind she remains as pure and untouched as this memory. 

                Though she has left too, I can think on her with little sadness brought about because of something I did, or said, or didn't do or say. She left because she had to and it was her time. 

                But now my thoughts have become disorganized, my mind a jumble, as if I am still twelve years old, and she is standing in front of me, looking at me in that way that made me clumsy and dumb before her. She knew that she had that effect on me, and she loved to stare at me to get just that reaction. 

                Remus was the reason I came to Derry. 

                It was the stupidest and most rash thing I had ever done as a child. And it changed my life in inestimable ways. 

                Peter, as he had planned to do, cornered the small Slytherin boy, Severus Snape one afternoon soon after he'd told me that he suspected him of having put Remus in the hospital. There was no reason to like the boy or believe him when he said he had no idea what Mic Peter was talking about. 

                For some reason it was perfectly fine for Peter to call Remus that. I had even heard James use the term. I was quite excited one day when he called me a Mic too. But when Severus Snape had said it, Peter had broken his nose. 

                I knew that there would be no chance that he would go near Remus again. And I stopped worrying about him for a while. 

                But when only a month went by and we were visiting him in the hospital wing I began to investigate. Remus, however, was as closed off as if none of us had ever met him. James and Peter and I shared a room with him and not one of us had an explanation. Peter was still insistent on a secret school bully. James would only reply with superiority that it takes one to know one. His explanation, while a little more crude, was all the more logical: Remus' parents beat him. And Dumbledore was helping them to cover it up. We made use of the three evenings that Remus was in the hospital wing to iron out our conspiracies. While James' seemed the likeliest, he only entertained the idea for intrigue's sake. His solution to Remus' problem, at first, was to let him deal with his family on his own. There was no reason for us to interfere. 

                "But I still think it's got to be another student," Peter said. "He talks about his family like he loves them all. I even want his family."

                "You'd want anybody else's family, Peter," James said pushing his glasses up unconcerned. "You don't have one. For you, you'd probably think it would be better to have a dad who beats you than no dad."

                I felt indignant for Peter. I knew it wasn't true. And I knew that Peter must have missed having a dad. I did. But at least I had a mum. Peter only had an aunt. She was an aunt that loved him, I guess, but that can't replace a mum. But I didn't tell James that. A better friend would have stood up for Peter. I guess I would have just rather let James pick on Peter than me. Because I liked James, and if I were completely honest, I would have admitted that James' approval meant more to me than consideration for Peter. I know now that it was unfair of me to let James pick on him as relentlessly as he did. 

                But memories are only photographs, not windows. You can try as hard as you might to look through them, but you'll never see past your blindness in that moment and the truth of the matter. Now I can see that we all hurt Peter. It was only natural that he would want to lash back. But when he finally did, he lashed back very hard. And I can still feel the sting thirteen years later. 

                But that's another memory and another story for a later hour. 

                "Do you know his parents?" I asked equably instead. 

                Peter fell silent. 

                "No," James said. "But he's always saying that he has to go away to see a sick aunt, or his sister was hurt or his grandmother died. They sound like lame excuses to me. The very same evening he's in the hospital wing with all sorts of injuries. He'll end up dead someday."

                "Don't say that!" I yelled. No doubt I had woken up a Prefect. 

                Peter put a restraining hand on my shoulder. "No, Sirius. James is just being stupid. He's pretending that this doesn't bother him. But he's really scared. Because he likes Remus. He's afraid for him." Peter was looking straight at James as he said this. "But he's just being stupid. It's what he does."

                "Yeah," I said in a small voice. "I guess you're right."

                "Well, Freud and Jung," James said in an impatient tone. "Now that you've psychoanalyzed me, can we get back to the issue at hand?"

                "Yes," Peter said. "But don't call me names."

                "If you're right and it's his father or his mother that beats him all the time," I said to stave off further argument, "maybe the next time he makes that excuse we can keep him here…somehow…not let him go."

                "You're suggesting we lock him in his trunk, Vivaldi?" James asked with a sarcastic raise of his eyebrows, leaning back on his bed and glaring at me. If he wasn't a fantastic Quidditch player, or one of the brightest students in our year, I don't think half of his friends would like him very much, I remember thinking at that moment. But he always insulted everyone in such a disarming way. How did he do it, I often wondered?

                "No, I'm just saying, if we're his friends then we should hide him so his parents can't take him home." I played with the hem of my school robes, waiting for James' deliberation on my ideas. 

                "There might be something to that," he said almost to himself. 

                I visited Remus in the hospital. I wasn't allowed to stay very long. This time was worse. His right eye was swollen shut and his head was wrapped in a bandage, an arm wrapped all the way up to his elbow. 

                I thought, while I sat by him, that if James and Peter didn't come up with something, if they didn't care enough, then I would have to think of something by myself. Remus was my friend. I had never had very many of them before I came to Hogwarts, but Remus was my friend and I didn't want his mum and dad to hurt him anymore. I wouldn't let his parents take him and hit him and bring him back to heal in the school hospital wing like nothing had happened. I would ask my mum to let Remus stay with us and he could be my brother. 

                I was almost out of my seat with the new idea, eager to see it come to fruition, when Madam Pomfrey bustled by with a warm smile to shoo me away. I looked on her with childish disdain and held back the biting words of disgust I had for her. How could she let that happen to a nice boy like Remus? She was an evil lady and I didn't ever want to be injured and have to come here because she would probably drug me and take one of my kidneys for experimental purposes. James told me she would. 

                As I was leaving I saw them. Remus' parents turned the corner. I passed them and knew I was glaring, but the tall man and the woman with a round face like Remus' pretended not to see me. I knew they must have and I imagined that they were very uneasy because they knew that I knew something. 

                When I was sure they had seen me round the corner and leave the hospital wing, I backtracked and like a spy, I trailed them to the doors, ducking below the glass when one of them turned around. I could hear them and I knew they wanted to take Remus home. And he couldn't say he didn't want to go, because he was asleep and had not woken up for maybe hours. 

                "I'll send someone to get his trunk and I'll ask all of his professors to hold all of his homework and tests," Madam Pomfrey said, oozing pleasantness and affability. I wanted to run in and hex them all. But I didn't know any hexes. 

                Another idea presented itself while I was rooted there in a blind rage: I could go with him if I could not keep him from going altogether. 

                Quickly, I raced back up to Gryffindor Tower. I had decided along the way not to tell Peter or James what I had planned. They would probably squeal on me if I had. 

                I worked quickly because I knew someone would be up shortly to get Remus' trunk. 

                I emptied it as fast as I could, throwing all of its contents onto my bed. Aristophanes meowed and watched from my pillow as I moved from one trunk to another, putting all of my books and things into Remus' trunk. All of them looked alike. I didn't think anyone would know the difference. 

                Mine had a loose board near the bottom on the right side below the handle, and it would be perfect for what I was planning. 

                Remus' stuff went into my trunk and I had enough room to put a few changes of my own clothes in as well. 

                Hurriedly I took a piece of paper from the desk by my bed and wrote a note to Peter asking him to feed my cat while I was gone. I kissed Aristophanes on his fuzzy gray head and moved to push my trunk to the foot of Remus' bed and his to the end of mine. 

                I heard footsteps coming up to the landing of our room and I knew that it must be Filch or Hagrid to fetch Remus' things. Everyone else was at lunch. 

                Ripping the tape from my own trunk that said my name, I switched it with Remus' and climbed inside, sliding the lock home just before the door opened. Inside the crammed trunk I breathed a little easier, my head toward the side with the broken slat where I knew I would have enough air. 

                I was not claustrophobic and so the confined space didn't bother me.     

                But I hadn't thought of what I would do once I was smuggled away from the school and to Remus' house. I gave no consideration to what I would say or whether I would be beaten to for stowing away in Remus' trunk. It was hot, probably because I was nervous. The weather was bleak outside as it was January the eighteenth and it was snowing. 

                My only consolation was that I knew Remus wouldn't be alone. And that seemed to me the most important thing. 

                Now I can laugh at it. I was a completely stupid and willful child. I knew James had believed wholeheartedly that Remus' parents would take him home to beat him on a regular basis. I believed it too once James had put the notion into my head. It kept me awake nights to imagine what my best friend had to suffer at the hands of the people that were supposed to love him. 

                What I found—the truth—was even more shocking and upsetting. The worse part was that I was helpless to save him from the reality of it. 

                I stowed away in my trunk disguised as Remus'. 

                Once I knew I was inside the house in Derry where Remus lived, I began to kick and yell and generally behave like a gorilla would. 

                An astonished man opened the possessed trunk and found me crammed inside trying to fight my way out from under a pile of books and scarves that had me tied down.

                A stunned look to Remus who stood behind his frightened mum and I knew this was his father and I immediately lunged for him. 

                It must have been a very comical sight in retrospect. 

                Mr. Lupin was a very large man. And I clung around his neck like a demonic thing kicking and screaming. 

                "Sirius?" Remus had asked in a weary yet very shocked tone. 

                "Run!" I screamed while Remus' father attempted to pull me from him. "I got him. Get out before they beat you."

                "Beat me?" Remus said with raised eyebrows looking incredulously at me. 

                I stopped struggling and dropped from Mr. Lupin. He stood by massaging his neck and regarding me as if I were a regular nutter.                 

                Remus tried to hide a smile. "Sirius, why would you think my parents beat me? And what are you doing in my trunk?"

                "It's my trunk," I said sheepishly massaging my cramped back. 

                "You got locked in your trunk and we took it by mistake?" Remus asked evenly. 

                "No, I hid in it so I could rescue you from your parents," I clarified, feeling even dimmer. I wished that I had planned this out better. 

                "My parents don't beat me, Sirius," Remus said in a tone that spoke clearly that I shouldn't have come. 

                "But, I thought…James and Peter said…you end up in the hospital wing all the time…" I said feeling like I'd slapped him in the face. 

                Looking from Remus I saw with a great deal of self-loathing the expressions that his parents wore: a mixture of horror at the thought and apprehension. 

                Mr. Lupin looked from me to Remus' mum and said, "Mae, set another place for dinner." He heaved a sigh and looked to his son and finished, "I think your friend needs an explanation."

                Remus nodded grudgingly and gestured to a worn couch in the middle of a flat that I had just noticed was only about half the size of the place I shared with my mum above the bakery in Belfast. 

                I sat and my legs hurt from being cramped. 

                I looked to Remus and he didn't look happy to be having a friend for dinner. I wished that I hadn't tried to save him. He obviously didn't need me to. And I began to wonder what a friend does for another friend, if not save each other from constant danger. 

                The cold gray stone of this alley way begins to glint with water as the sky drips down on to it. Ireland knows rain. These alleyways look alien without the glistening of a good Irish soak. 

                In the dismal weather I cannot restrain a chuckle as I remember back on that moment. Remus' father would tease me as long as he was alive. I am forever Jack-In-The-Box to him. I hope Mae has forgotten that embarrassing nickname by now. 

                Remus understood my intentions, even if he could not believe my actions. 

                His explanation as to why he was in and out of the hospital was not funny, however. I felt a greater surge of sympathy for him. I wanted to help in some way. It only made things worse that there was no way I could. 

                There is one betrayal that I am not sorry for and never will be: betraying Remus the night I told James and Peter about his condition. It was a burden that I cannot even now justify letting him carry on his own. Friends first and foremost help with the bearing of such a weight. There was not a moment that Peter, James and I had hesitated in becoming what we had to help him. 

                But that is also a memory to visit at a later time. 

                Two days later was January 20, 1972. 

                A lot of people would talk about it with a detached formality. 

                But for those of us that were there…there are hardly any words. 

                Later it would be called Bloody Sunday. I thought it was the end of the world. 


	2. The Troubles

Disclaimer: I own the background characters, thus far. The canons belong to Rowling. The scenes and setting belong to Ireland/Northern Ireland and her rich past. The lyrics to the song _Sunday Bloody Sunday belong to the band U2 (big shocker). _

Author's Note: I think this chapter deserves a bit of a disclaimer for the content. The opinions expressed in this chapter are not the author's per se. They are meant to reflect the background, history, characters and setting of the time. But I will say that I believe the evidence speaks for itself. Most of the racial and cultural slurs in this chapter were actually taken from history and first hand accounts themselves. Some names have been changed for convenience's sake. 

Chapter Two

The Troubles

_Broken bottles under children's feet _

_Bodies strewn across the dead end street _

_But I won't heed the battle call_

_It puts my back up_

_Puts my back up against the wall_

_Sunday Bloody Sunday…_

_"The Bogside was once a street, now it is a condition."_

_-Seamus Deane_

                "Mae, set another place for dinner," Gerald Lupin said to his wife as she loitered hesitatingly at the door they had just come in from. She passed a picture on the wall: the Bleeding Heart of Christ. I looked from her back to Remus and his father. But the father was staring at the son, the son was staring at me, his expression a wash of hidden reactions. "I think your friend needs an explanation," he said somberly. Remus nodded. 

                I stood where I was. I remember The Bleeding Heart of Christ and the sounds of Mae busy in the kitchen, but I can't recall Remus' exact wording, so stunned I was by the truth he had no choice but to share with me. 

                Maybe I was sitting. I remember blinking. I registered Remus' lips moving and their must have been sound coming from them, but everything was mute, but not mute…deafened by the noise from the kitchen which seemed to grow to drown all other sound. Numb and deaf. That's what I remember. 

                I knew there was another explanation for the bruises, other injuries and hospital visits. His parents were lovely and patient, his mother doted on him particularly. The explanation that he had for me was not something that I wanted to hear. 

                "Would you like to telephone your mother?" Remus asked. 

                I blinked again and this time I seemed to hear what he has asked. "Why?" was the first thing out of my mouth, I guess it sounded suspicious. Remus winced slightly and stood.

                "Because," he answered. "I figured once you knew what I really was you would want to get out of here. You can stay for dinner. I don't care. I'm going to bed now anyway," the haggard boy said with a look to his father and a frown pulling his features down. He gave me one last fleeting glance before retreating down a crowded hall. I don't think I answered his invitation. I stared down the hall after him and I can understand why he had taken my reaction as fear. 

                A minute or two…or five later I looked back to see Gerald staring at me in turn. "Is he…?" I tried. "Does he…Is it this bad every time?" I asked in a weak voice. 

                His sad eyes went to the ground. "It's worse when he's under stress. School's been tough for him, being out so often."

                I shook my head fervently. I had seen his digression, noting it with worry. My worry was not lightened, but added to with this additional knowledge. I found my voice and asked other things that were on my mind. "Is that why he has to go to Hogwarts? Because he wouldn't fit in at any other school?"

                Gerald nodded once and said, "You see, Jack-In-The-Box," he smiled when he said this and I was visited with an earlier memory of my father, before the funeral day. Gerald was unlike my father in frankness. He spoke in measured tones and used economy with his words. He was not a bank president with a wealth of good humor and vocabulary at his disposal. He was a docks worker with a family that depended on him, respected him and obeyed him. He probably had a tolerable education and an earthly way with words, but he was always sincere and genuine when he spoke. Every word had weight. "He has opportunities that were never opened up to anyone else in this family. He has a great love for his country and its people…and his faith, but he does not understand that God has set aside something special for him." He nodded again and looked to the ground, "O'course, he is also made to suffer a great deal more than the rest of us. That's just God's way of preparing him for rough work, is what he told me. I love my son, you see. And I'm thankful plenty for the friend he's found in you. He won't fit in at that school anymore than he would in a school for educating the regular children, so his headmaster has seen to it that he can attend and keep his secret burden. But I had my doubts that he could keep it for long." He heaved a sigh and looked at me. 

                My eyes were wide and I was thinking. My mental processes were being unforgivably slow and I must have stared for a while before I noticed that I was. When I spoke my voice was hoarse and slow as well. "Has he…he hasn't hurt anyone before, has he?" I regretted the question immediately. But Gerald answered with a slow nod and leaned forward on his elbows. His hair was graying at the temples but I only noticed that just now, he had circles under his eyes. The sight of him bent and worrying over his child reminded me of my mother and Cassandra. But she was dead already and my mother's worry was in vain. The thought was distracting and I pushed it to the side. I blinked to clear my mind's slate and stared with renewed zeal at Remus' father in front of me.

                "Just once. It wasn't bad. But he won't forgive himself either." Gerald stood when the door opened admitting two girls, one looked to be about my age or maybe a bit younger. She had enchanting curls the same color as Remus' hair and she regarded me immediately with suspicion. I stood next to Remus' father as she was pushed through the door by another girl much older. She also had blond hair but it was tied back away from her face in barrettes and she looked very much like bookish Remus in a plaid sweater vest. She smiled unlike the younger girl and said to Remus' father, "Who've you got there, dad?"

                Setting down a few bags on the counter in the kitchen she came back into the room for her answer and laughed when Gerald had told her the truth. Leveling cold blue eyes on me her face was wiped suddenly of the laugh and she glared at me. "Well, now that he knows about our little Remus, we'll have to kill him." She looked up suddenly to the man who was evidently her father and added, "How many people know he's here? Can we dispose of the body quietly?"

                "Catherine." Her dad's firm but humored rebuke that stopped her play-acting untied the knot that was forming in my stomach. I was unaware that this was a joke and felt sheepish when she began to laugh and ruffle my hair. The little girl with the curls still stared at me with unflinching earnestness. "He's terrified enough as it is."

                "What's your name?" Catherine asked in another laugh. 

                "Sirius," I said faintly. 

                "That's a name?" the little girl said folding her arms over her chest. I only nodded. 

                "Well, Sirius, it's good Remus has a friend that cares as much about him as you do. It's a first," Catherine said and moved into the kitchen to unload the bags. 

                "It's not exactly as if I have a lot of friends either," I admitted to another smile Catherine gave me, leaning through the kitchen door. 

                The smaller girl, still staring, now incredulously asked as she shifted her weight from her right foot to her left, menacing in a Catholic school uniform, "What's your excuse, do you transform into monsters on the full moon as well?"

                I blinked and was taken aback by her firm and commanding tone. I tried to think if Remus had mentioned a little sister with a sharp tongue. He hadn't, I was sure I would remember her if he had. 

                "Margaret, dear," Mae's voice came from the kitchen. "Come wash your hands for dinner and leave the poor boy alone."

                She left with one evil glance backward and I was angry that this girl appeared frightening to me. 

                Remus didn't show up at the table for dinner and I can recall feeling very strange eating dinner with four complete strangers. Catherine was nice enough. She was a student of political science and women's studies at the University of Belfast. I nodded, affecting an air as if I knew exactly what women's studies entailed, though if I was asked I feel I might not have persuaded my audience of my thorough knowledge. In my mind, I arrived at the conclusions that it may have been some sort of advanced cooking classes. It made complete sense to me that she would seek to supplement that rather base study with something more challenging and stimulating to her mind which was already beginning to impress me as brilliant. Catherine explained to me that she was home for the March. 

                She said March, as if it should naturally begin with a capital M and that I should very well know what it was, like I knew what women's studies was. After all, I lived in Belfast, didn't I?

                Sitting at this table with Gerald silent and eating slowly with his head down in a manner completely solitary and pensive, Margaret next to me waiting for the chance that I might slip up and show my ignorance so that she may point it out to me, Catherine, all good nature and encouragement, and Mae who seemed content to pile food on my plate and nod pointing with her fork and telling me that I was far too skinny. 

                For all of the interest this scene provided, I would have liked nothing more than to sit beside Remus in his room, whether he was awake or not. I was desperate for him to know that I wanted to help him. He needed only to show me how I could. Mae had written to my mother and assured her that my spending the weekend in Derry would not be a problem. I wanted to stay at least until Remus was awake so that I could apologize. It was hard to eat when I thought about him and my rash decision to save him from his abusive family and how it all ended up with him forced to tell me a truth that he had no intention of sharing with me. I would have respected the gesture of that confidence had it come voluntarily. But from then on, though we would trust each other, I would always test the bonds that were built out of that forced confidence and regret that I hadn't trusted Remus enough to tell me in his own time. 

                Remus had another sibling, a brother named Aidan, younger than Catherine but also old enough to be of college age. He had come through the door as Mae finished clearing the table. I watched as he leaned over and dutifully kissed her cheek and sat down next to Margaret at the table. Mae piled food in front of him as she had done with me and I studied him as he remained unaware of my presence in the adjoining room. There was really only one word to describe him: _cool_. His hair was nearly down to his chin, darker than that of his sisters' hair and he wore glasses like Remus, managing at the same time to make them fashionable with his hair and the denim jacket he wore. I remember seeing him for the first time. I was sitting quietly on the sofa beside Catherine listening to the agonizing tail of my mistake, jumping out of Remus' trunk and attaching myself to Gerald, threatening him with all the force that a twelve-year-old could muster. Aidan must have swept into the kitchen thinking that I was his younger brother and that it would be perfectly logical for Remus to be home from school in the middle of the term. 

                I suppose that it would be a little frivolous to imagine that you were someone else. It never gives one satisfaction and it can only transport one efficiently into an alternate life if one's means of imagination were sufficient enough to carry the fantasy. I was very adept at fantasy, however. And I was immediately carried away by the persona that Aidan exuded. I imagined what sorts of things he got up to during the day, consorting with his super street friends, looking keen in his denim jacket and generally drawing fantastic attention to himself with his wild hair that hung in his eyes in strands of dark golden. What more could one hope to accomplish in this fantasy? I couldn't think of one thing more. I did decide that there was something that super Aidan could never and would never do: play the violin. Maybe he played the guitar for a rock group. Maybe he was a pub keeper who could twirl liquor bottles like they do in the American films. 

                Margaret stared over the spine of a book she was reading, glaring at me as I stared off in wonder at what Aidan did all day in his denim jacket. I didn't notice that she was staring until she shut her book and leaned over, telling her brother that Remus had brought a friend home, and that my name really was Sirius and that I thought that was okay. On a side note she added that I looked more like a Thomas, she would have named me Thomas. I was indifferent to the fact that Margaret wanted to rename me. But Aidan looked over his shoulder while shoveling some potatoes into his mouth and smiled. "That's a pretty spiffy name you got there. You go to school with Remus, do you?"

                I nodded. An intelligent answer would have escaped anyone faced with the image of the person that they most wanted to become, and realizing for the first time that your ideals are personified in a complete stranger. 

                "Tell me then," Aidan said, clearing his own plate and moving into the room, leaning against the door frame of the small kitchen. "What kind of magic have you learned? You're a second year, right."

                Another nod and I felt that if words didn't come soon he would think I was a mute. 

                "Have you learned any sort of healing yet?" Aidan persisted. 

                "Maybe in a year or two. We're restricted," I choked out. 

                Aidan smiled. "I want Remus to join the Knights of Malta with me when he's old enough. He could be dead useful if he knows magic for healing."

                And his persona grew larger. 

                "What's the Knights of Malta?" I asked. 

                Catherine snorted and pushed herself up from the sofa beside me. "You asked for it, Sirius," she said as she disappeared down the hall. A door shut and Aidan took her spot on the sofa beside me. "We're paramedics. You'll see us in action on Sunday."

                "Oh no he won't," Mae interjected. "He will not be on the March. What would his mother have to say about that?"

                I gave a small smile. The March. Now it sounded more glamorous than when Catherine had said the word. I wanted to see what would be going on Sunday now more than ever. 

                Aidan continued with enthusiasm, "We train with the Red Cross." He said the words with respect. This was a passion for him. "We usually only take care of minor things like gas and rubber bullet wounds." He shrugged and smiled. "But I heard at the pub that the soldiers have ideas of cracking heads. We'll be ready, but it won't be us whose heads get cracked."

                "Oh, nice talk," Catherine said peeking around the bend in the crowded hall. "Margaret, bed time." She turned back to Aidan and said, "I would think that you, being a paramedic, would encourage _peace, Aidan."_

                "I do," he said with a disarming smile and hands raised in surrender. "But there's only so much that peaceful demonstrations will get you. I'm not saying things will turn violent. But if they do, we'll be ready. That's all I'm saying."

                Catherine looked at him sideways and retreated behind Margaret. 

                Aidan gave me his bed at the other side of the window from Remus'. 

                Remus was asleep and hidden under a quilt, resembling nothing more than a lump. 

                I watched Aidan take some clean linens from the closet. He winked and closed the door. I hoped that the sofa was not too bad. I didn't think I would be displacing someone from their bed when I decided to rescue Remus. Now I was feeling foolish again. But the feeling was soon forgotten when I heard the door to the front room open with a slow creak and the lock slide discreetly home again. Rolling over minutes later I saw Aidan move across the street to meet a slim figure under lamp light, half-hidden. I wondered if there was a curfew imposed in Derry like the one in Belfast and I opened the window to lean out of the dark room to watch him. 

                "You might as well come out. There's a better view here," a snide voice whispered quietly down to me. I saw feet first, bare and dangling from the roof, Margaret's golden curls framing a face that was scrutinizing me from a perch on the parapet of the gently sloping roof of the flats. 

                She offered a hand unceremoniously as I crawled out to the edge. It really was an easy climb, as if the sill and the roof were made at a distance to accommodate such acts as spying on the streets below. Sitting next to her I immediately asked her what it was she was doing up here. Shrugging, Margaret answered me, "I am always up here. I sleep, but not too much. I like watching them. They're nice together."

                "Are they out here every night?" I asked. The figure under the light was clearly a girl. 

                "Just about," Margaret answered. "There's a curfew and it's dangerous, but it's also romantic."

                There was a bite to the wind that left a lot of convincing that it was in anyway romantic. "Why do they have to meet outside? It's cold."

                Margaret took a moment to think, never taking her eyes from the pair. "She's Protestant."

                "So," I said immediately. 

                Margaret shook her head slowly. "So. It's everything. Her family wouldn't allow it and ours is just as proud. The Meehans own the docks."

                "Is that supposed to mean something," I said, prickling either from the cold or the chill of her cool indifference to me. 

                "Yes. Both Aidan and father work at the docks. Aidan is saving up for medical school at Dublin's Royal College of Surgeons. He pays for Remus' schooling. I can tell from how your dressed that you have no idea what that means, so just trust me. We would be ruined if they were found out."

                "I'm not dumb, you know," I said quickly. I felt I would have to point that out right away or she would continue talking down to me. 

                She turned her indigo eyes on me and I felt a lump forming in my throat. "I don't think you're dumb, Sirius," she admitted finally.

                A wind whipped her hair up briefly and its scent was caught on the air. There was nothing else to remember but the feeling of the wind, the scent of her hair, the fact that neither of us knew what it was that we were doing, more of a childish re-enactment of a more complicated scene taking place on the streets below us. And with no more force or movement than two moths bumping together under lamplight, her lips brushed mine as she leaned into me. There was no learned grace about that kiss. If there was any grace to it, it was in the childlike clumsiness. I remember the trembling of her fingertips on the cold skin of my forearm, a light and unsure touch. But it excited me perhaps more than the kiss itself. I pulled back and she opened her eyes again. 

                The first words I could grasp on to were, "Why did you do that?"

                She shrugged in that indifferent way that I was coming to enjoy. "I thought it would be exciting." She brushed a windblown strand from her face and looked to the street where the couple was splitting, the Meehan girl walking up the street and Aidan back to the flats. "Better go," Margaret urged. 

                Caught at surprise, I had nothing to say. I did want to believe that she kissed me because she liked me. But maybe it had been for excitement, maybe for both of us. 

                A crisp and clear Sunday broke over the Lough Foyle and found me standing with Remus on its banks. The clouds were high and the wind cold, but there was just enough sun to make glitter dance along the surface. I was listening with my shoulders hunched against the slight stinging wind as Remus spoke. He was saying that on clear days you could see straight to Scotland from here. His grandmother had told him that. 

                I remained quiet and snatched glances at Remus when he looked down at his shoes in the sandy beach, or when he had raised his head to find the mainland across the water. He was as tired looking as when I saw him yesterday evening when he finally woke up and he still had a livid bruise on his brow. 

                "You can ask me. I won't lie," he said without looking at me. 

                "Ask you what?" I said feigning innocence. 

                He leveled his intense gray eyes at me, lit from the morning sun. Narrowing them was answer enough. 

                "Does it hurt?" I asked, biting my lip and wishing I had phrased my question better. Mother said that it was always a sign of good breeding to choose your words with the least offense to others. I guess my later obsession with speech was fostered in comments like that from my mother, and looks like the one Remus was giving me now. 

                His expression melted into resignation and I indulged the idea that had it been James or Peter who had asked, Remus would not have answered. 

                "Yes," he said looking again across the river. "Sometimes I'm at hospital or in bed for much longer than two days. It's worse when I get upset for some reason."

                "What were you upset about?" I asked. 

                The bells of morning Mass were ringing in the distance. The sound was punctuated by hammering. The hammering was deadened by the sound of heavy trucks moving over the bridge. They were military vehicles and Remus seemed more interested in watching them pass than answering me. But I waited patiently for him to remember what I had asked. 

                "I was worried that you were becoming more suspicious of me," Remus said matter-of-factly, shoving his hands in his pockets before turning his head from the bridge and saying, "Come on. Mum will be looking for us. We have midday Mass. Have you ever been to Mass?"

                I shook my head and followed him from the river bank. The trucks were roaring over the bridge and past us. 

                The events of that day changed my life. The people who shared those events stuck with me like a Proverb. I did not understand what was happening at the time, my life afterward had been this and other Civil Rights protests, mostly in my own hometown of Belfast, also in other places…but never again in Derry. I found I could not come back here. 

                The climate at the time I had been there was charged and ready for disaster. I walked through the streets of a powder keg with Remus ignorant that the whole thing would blow in hours, that my innocence and naïveté would be pulled away from me, many others—Remus', too. 

                In an area four miles inside the statelet of Northern Ireland, divided off from Ireland proper in the 1921 partition, Derry had since remained a hotbed of Unionist-Nationalist conflict. Broken down into easier terms you could simplify it as being a Catholic-Protestant war. 

                I was ignorant of what went on in my own town. In Belfast the commons were divided 67 per cent Protestant/Unionist to 33 per cent Catholic/Nationalist. In Derry it was more divided than that in local elections: twelve seats to eight. Around me was an enchanting backdrop that the Irish have always been exposed to but have never taken for granted. The Inishowen Mountains lay a gray backdrop on the port and the town while on the streets lined with derelict buildings, some bombed out shops and crowded flats like those at Rossville where Remus' family lives, swept now with a cold wind and a housing shortage. Unemployment was the order of the day here, four miles shy of the Republic of Ireland. Rent strikes were a common occurrence. 

                The Civil Rights platform sought the reunification of Ireland but through the consent of the majority, rather than the gun. But by the 1970's the instruments of repression and discrimination, namely the armed police of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont and its unassailable Unionist majority were an immovable road block to this progress. The Catholics and the Protestants of Northern Ireland were as entrenched as they ever were. 

                In response to the ineffectiveness of the Civil Rights movement, the Irish Republican Army was an active and dangerous force that demanded attention and got it this Sunday. But even among the IRA there was a divide. The Provisional IRA under Sean Keenan was an extension if the Civil Rights movement and was often criticized for being too non-violence. The Officials were the Collinsists and were comprised of militants, ex-soldiers, and young radicals. 

                It was these young radicals and the threat to private property (Protestant, that is) that brought out the most notable figures of the day: the British Paratroopers. 

                There was a feeling here that resonated at Stormont in Belfast that the peaceful march would escalate with the presence of the Officials and their young hooligan force. There was a concern that violence would arise from the IRA in response to some arrests and beatings in the week prior. Stormont Prime Minister Brian Falkner approached the possibility of conflict with more than force, he was sending combat trained Paras into a civilian march with SLR's and high velocity bullets, more than riot gear, and far more than the IRA's ancient Thompson Submachine Guns could match. 

                I looked to my left and to my right. Midday Mass was frightening. There was some sort of secret code that I wasn't let in on. I was in awe of the learned staging of the service. Everyone spoke at the same time, crossed themselves at the same time, sat at the same time. 

                Remus must have sensed my apprehension. Either that or he noticed that I was making a fool of myself. 

                "Just sit, stand and Amen when everyone else does. Amen," he added when the priest finished his speech in Latin. 

                "How will I know? Everything's in another language." I crossed myself with the opposite hand as everyone else and elicited some looks. 

                Leaning close to my ear Remus whispered, "And use your right hand to cross yourself. People will think we have an Orthodox in our midst."

                My head spun with the bureaucracy of it all. 

                Father O'Neil who I had just met outside before the service started came through the large doors of St. Eugene's, ominous and urgent. He approached the podium and whispered to the priest who spoke in Latin, Father Daly, and everyone watched and whispered themselves. 

                Speaking into the microphone on the podium, Father Daly said, "Those of you who are planning to attend the march I urge extreme caution." A din buzzed around the lofty room and the priest had to hold up his hands for silence. "It is extremely important that we proceed directly to the Bishop's Field. Those not attending the march, return to your homes. I speak specifically to the young in the congregation today when I say, please do not provoke violence. This is to be a peaceful demonstration. When we close Mass do not be alarmed to see the cathedral surrounded. The soldiers are here for our protection, do not forget."

                "Right," Aidan whispered to Catherine. "See you out there."

                "Be careful," Mae warned in her worried motherly tone. 

                Aidan smiled reassuringly and flung his paramedics bag with its fantastic red cross on a white background over his neck and one shoulder and pushed past her and Margaret to the aisle. His friend Charlie Glenn, who I had also met outside, stood two rows behind us and left. 

                After a prayer for the marchers and generally for all of the citizens of Derry, Gerald turned to Remus and said, "Go straight home. Take William Street with the crowd and don't dawdle in alleyways. Hold Margaret's hand and look after Jack-In-The-Box." He winked at me as Remus nodded his understanding. I wanted to feel indignant. I didn't need looking after. I was just as old as Remus was. 

                We left Catherine and Mae and Gerald at the Bishop's Field where they were congregating for the march. There was a lot of excited talk about the Paratroopers coming to crack heads and Bernadette Devlin all the way in from Belfast. 

                I wanted to see where the Knights of Malta were gathering but I was pulled away from my search when Margaret, holding her brother's hand, said, "You better take care you don't get lost." She took my hand as well and Remus pulled both of us off the field and down the sidewalk on William Street. 

                The sound of hammering had stopped a long time ago. But now I knew for the first time what the hammering was all about. As we passed Francis Street and then Lower Road I saw large wooden barricades up in the middle of the streets blocking the way. There were catches in the tops of the barricades to hold guns and men in riot gear manned them with disinterested looks. 

                I placed my free hand in my pocket and Margaret held tight to the other. I was pulled from the corner at Lower Road and the barricade onward. As we went further up William Street the marchers were growing fainter, the sound of Bernadette Devlin's voice weaker, the singing _"We Shall Overcome" drowned out by the riotous noise of shouting and crashing. A group of young men were congregating around a bigger barricade at the end of William Street just past a complex of flats. Rocks and cans and other debris one would find on a street, or at a construction site were being hurled into the air at the soldiers at this barricade. Some of them clutched at large automatic weapons. _

                There were police and soldiers in Belfast on march days. But I had never seen such severe and steely expressions before. I remembered thinking that these weren't normal soldiers. They wore red berets and painted their faces with black. I thought that it was silly to do so because they would run the risk of ruining those bright and spiffy hats. They were in combat dress and generally more stern-looking than the soldiers at the other barricades. 

                As I was watching them Margaret pulled away from me and we were divided by a group of running teenagers. A canister flew past me. Ducking, I was thrown back against the wall of a derelict building of brick. Stunned, I looked around for Remus and Margaret and found only a swirling crowd, shouting, running, throwing anything they could find. The canister was hefted by a screaming boy a little older than me. I watched, pressed against the wall of the building, as he threw the canister back at the soldiers behind the barricade. The crowd was emptying out onto a nearby waste ground. The angry boy in front of me was a mirror of twenty or more just like him. At odd intervals, he and his comrades would stoop to pick up paving rocks broken into pieces, building materials and other projectiles and hurled them forward at the soldiers. 

                Another gun was leveled at the crowd from the barricade and a canister fired. This time it hit the boy in front of me with the force of a missile, between the eyes. His nose was set at an odd angle. I remember him falling to the ground. Another youth yelled, "You've killed him." 

                I saw that he was not dead, but writhing on the ground, bleeding from the nose. 

                The canister was not a faulty one this time. It exploded next to the boy it had injured and in a puff of white smoke engulfed the crowd. Near the explosion, I was driven to the ground—not by the force of it, but by the effects of it. 

                Coughing and hacking, the back of my throat felt as if it were raw and bloody, while my eyes stung with the peppery gas. I blinked tears and tried to see through the gas. There was nothing immediately in front of me but the injured boy still on the ground, the white cloud of gas and the sounds of choking and gasping. 

                An arm grabbed out around me and I was almost driven again to my knees with his weight. It was an older man with graying hair. His eyes were red and he kept coughing the words "I can't see. Those bastards have blinded me. I can't see." Many people in the crowd were clinging to each other in an effort to remain standing and to escape the ever widening area covered by the thick white and peppery smoke. 

                Stumbling to support the old man, the one arm not around my shoulders was thrashing about in front of him, I went the way that they crowd was headed, out into the open area of the waste land with its gray rubble landscape. 

                I would learn in my later research that CS gas, _ortho-chlorobenzal-malonutrile, had not been tested in human cases when it was employed on the Sunday march in 1972, or in the marches previously. Through collaboration and an investigation that I was involved in during my career in civil rights law, Dr. McClean (the leader of the Knights of Malta and present on Bloody Sunday) and I had uncovered the dangers of this drug and many other ineptitudes and acts of exceeded violence on behalf of the British Military. 1105 cartridges of this gas were fired into the crowd on that one January day alone. The Dupont Labs later found that chlorobenzene, a well known industrial poison with known harmful effects on the brain, liver and kidneys, and malonic acid, used in American industrial plants, had caused a number of worker fatalities: the two should not be mixed. Unknown and potentially harmful side effects._

                The air was thick with the cloud of peppery white. The crowd, now swelling in ranks to more than one hundred, was coughing and sputtering, no choice but to inhale the harmful toxins. I among them felt the effects immediately and sought refuge, burdened with the weight of an elderly man who had all but collapsed on me. I moved with the crowd down Rossville Street. 

                The civil rights protestors and the large coal lorry that had brought Eammon McCann and Bernadette Devlin through to the spot where they had planned to make their speeches were congregated at the other end of the Rossville Flats near Free Derry Corner. The bullhorn in Devlin's hands employed in warning the crowd of inflamed youths not to push the soldiers into action, she shouted her non-violence ideals. The stewards with their white armbands were ineffectual in calming the tempers of the more militant marchers who rushed forward toward the number fourteen barricade on William Street shouting, "What about the Guildhall? We were to meet at the Guildhall."

                The plans had changed evidently. The March had not been sanctioned by the Stormont parliament and the soldiers had been sent in. The meeting place had been improvised at Free Derry Corner, and most were not keen on being corralled around like cattle in their own city. 

                "On to the Guildhall, men!" one youth said as he hurled another rock into the line of soldiers along the barricade. 

                I did not follow them. 

                I was only keen on getting away from the smoke and peppery sting of the gas. Down Rossville Street and to the protestors on the lorry seemed to be my best shot. Remus' parents would be there and they could take me back to Remus and the others. 

                Rubbing my hand against my watering eyes the fingers came away bloody. My tear ducts were bleeding. It was increasingly harder to see. 

                The old man hanging onto me fell. 

                I let him lie where he was. It was easier for me to move away from the crowd that was angering the soldiers and join up with the civil rights protestors. 

                But as I approached the bend at the junction of William Street and Rossville Street, I was bitingly aware that I was no safer here than under the cloud of gas and shouting threats of the youth mob and the Green Jackets. 

                Here the student protestors and the "hooligan element" had build a barricade out of rubble and building debris, dividing them from the soldiers about fifty feet away. I could see the civil rights protestors beyond that. They had turned to watch with horror as the young mob and the soldiers, the fierce elite Paratroopers with their self-loading rifles, CS gas, rubber bullets, and extremely destructive high velocity bullets. Under all of that gear—far more than riot gear—there was a façade of formality, under the surface brimmed a palpable hatred for the Nationalist, Catholic Irish. 

                The face off is as old as time among the Irish Nationalist and her captors. 

                Here the ages old conflict arose anew. 

                My eyes experienced it all as it unfolded. 

                Here it was the same as on William Street, throwing taunts and rocks. The hardened Paras were staring down a growing opposition. There was tension in the air that would soon be shattered by bullets. 

                A man next to me pushed me flat against the gabled wall of the flats and said, "Watch out when the stoning stops. That's when the snipers open up." 

                But the snipers weren't the issue at the moment. I only half registered the man's comment as he left me to join the throng again. 

                "English bastards, come out and fight!" Someone in the crowd shouted. "Come out and behave like men. Come out and fight!" 

                I prayed that the soldiers would not come out and fight. 

                Heart pounding, I pressed myself against the wall of the flats, unable to move. 

                In front of the rubble barricade, in the midst of the roar of hatred and defiance that a crowd of fifteen thousand could muster, sat a boy of about nineteen. I watched him through stinging eyes. 

                In a brown corduroy jacket and a black woolen cap, a handkerchief tied around his nose and mouth so he could breathe through the gas, the teenager sat staring defiantly at the Paras. 

                I looked between him and the Paratrooper who held his glare. 

                The Para went to one knee and leveled his gun at the crowd. The corduroy jacket and woolen cap that I watched through the crowed did not take his eyes from the Para.    

                The crowd surged back from the barricade for a moment as the soldier fired and in a wave moved forward again to the barricade with stones and taunts. 

                More rubber bullets were fired and a few men were hit, a couple of boys raced after stray rubber bullets to save as souvenirs. Throughout the volley of about seven rounds, the young man sat defiantly at the barricade.  

                A water canon moved around behind the rubble barricade and began spraying the rioters on the other side with a purple dye and a forceful spout as from a fireman's hose. Above the sound of the spray were the shouts, "Irish Pigs!" and "English Bastards!"

                The men in the camouflaged jumpsuits, red berets and blackened faces shifted, looking to me as if rubber bullets were too good for this lot. 

                Staring at the boy on the ground, sitting with his legs folded under him, the soldier holding his SLR nearest the barricade, close enough for me to hear him, shook his head. "All I want is a reason. Give me a reason, boy."

                He shifted again and dropped to one knee, leveling his rifle. 

                A crack and then a cry from behind me. I pushed myself away from the wall to see a boy lying on the ground.  Two men rushed over to him. "Where were you hit? You're alright, son. Just a rubber bullet," they said and began to pick him up. 

                Twisting around, looking around, I saw the soldier that shot him. He stood again and shouldered the rifle. 

                The men helping the boy to his feet dropped him in shock. There was blood. 

                Meshing with the purple dye that dripped down the face of the men and the boy was a deep red stream of blood. It flowed from his nose and chin, seemed to be dribbling from his mouth. 

                "Real bullets!" a women cried from a window some immeasurable distance above me, apparently watching the riot transpire from her balcony. "They're using real bullets!" 

                "Jackie," one of the men near the boy was saying. He crouched low, holding the boys head. "Can you hear me, Jackie? We'll get you some help."

                I saw the wound now. It was in his neck. As he sputtered and coughed it gushed more and more. 

                The other man that had dropped him when they'd seen the blood was running in frantic circles. 

                "Ma'am, a telephone? We need an ambulance," the one holding dying Jackie shouted up to the woman on the balcony above me.

                I pushed away from the wall when she didn't answer. I was in no way involved in the scene, but witnessing it, I felt I had a stake in whether Jackie lived or died. Did she have a phone? Why wasn't she answering?

                Stepping out into the street I looked up to see her wringing her hands. The sounds of reigning blows behind me made me spin around. An old man, the one that was clinging to me on William Street, was being beaten by the butt of an army issue rifle. I stepped across the street slowly. Not knowing what I could do for him, not knowing why I was even approaching, I moved forward anyway. 

                "Sirius?" I spun around. 

                Charlie Glenn with his hair like Aidan's and glasses and the Red Cross bag too saw me in the street and said, "Get down! They're shooting live rounds. You'll get hit."

                He was talking to me while tending to Jackie. 

                Coughing and choking on his own blood, the boy shook, his face turning blue, or was that the dye from the water canon?

                Father Daly from St. Eugene's was also bent next to Charlie, saying the last rites as the boy, Jackie twitched and paled, face smeared with blood, the look of a frightened child on the face of a boy older than me. 

                "Where's Aidan?" I asked. Moving away from the old man being beaten by a soldier and toward the only bit of familiarity in whirling chaos, Charlie that I met at St. Eugene's this morning, I heard the woman call down to the soldier saying, "You've just killed that boy. Are you going to kill that old man, too?" 

                I stopped. 

                The soldier stopped. 

                Looking at Jackie, rigid, eyes open, Charlie, head bent, bloody hands on the boy's forehead and Father Daly, eyes closed in prayer. He was dead. 

                Another shout rang through the noisy crowd. 

                Charlie shouted to me to get down. 

                A large chunk was blown from the wrought iron of the balcony the woman had been standing at. I turned to see the Para bringing his rifle back to his shoulder. The old man was no longer under blows. 

                 "Take care you're not next!" the Para shouted to the woman on the balcony stiff with fear. 

                A hand was on my shoulder and I jumped. 

                Charlie, heaving his bag over his head and one shoulder, pushed me back up against the wall with several other people, masks of terror, his bloody finger in my face saying, "Stay here. I'll find Aidan. But don't move. Understand?"

                I shook my head fervently. 

                Another shot rang out as Charlie crossed the street to Father Daly. He ducked and glared at the soldiers behind the barricade. Some of them laughed. 

                Crouching alongside a woman in faux leather boots and a skirt too short for the weather, and the bloody old man who'd been the victim of the soldier's brutality, I watched Jackie's body as it was lifted from the street and into the doorway of a nearby flat where more people where crowded away from the gunfire. 

                I wish I could say that was the end of it, or that I don't remember anymore. 

                I looked desperately to the building across the street, where Jackie's body was taken by Charlie. I looked at the building I crouched beside. I couldn't even remember if this was the street Remus lived on. I ducked beside the woman's leather boots and began to be angry with Remus and Margaret for leaving me. They must have known where they left me. 

                On the barricade three more people where hit. 

                I knew that they hadn't been hit with rubber bullets. There was more blood. 

                I was beginning to hate the color. Purple from the dye and blood. 

                They lay behind the barricade in a pile. One was moving his arm and yelling for help. A man beside me, for a moment I thought he looked like Gerald, moved away from the building and toward the barricade. Another shot rang through the crowd and he was driven back against the wall almost atop of me. 

                Getting up, he moved again at once. There was a fusillade of shots to accompany his movement and I pressed myself harder against the building. 

                Desperately, I looked to the boys out at the barricade. One was lying with his face up to the sky. He was young, not much older than me. Clutching at his stomach, he yelled, "Help me! I don't want to die alone." 

                On the ground another boy about the same age inched toward him. The rubble piled up offered him a modicum of security. He reached the boys, held his hand out to the one shouting and clutching his stomach. The other two were not moving. 

                A shot from the building above, maybe the roof. The boy that had moved out to hold the hand of the other one as he died, so he wouldn't be alone had been shot. The back of his head was gone. 

                I saw no more of it. My face was buried in the jacket of the woman with the leather boots. 

                "Oh, _Jaysus_!" she said as she grabbed hold of me instinctively as I had grabbed her. The feeling of her nervous hand stroking my hair as I hid from the gruesome scene in the folds of her coat was comforting. 

                I only looked up again when I heard the shouts of the man who was trying to move from the building where we were to the barricade. 

                "Shoot me, bastards!" he shouted. 

                Peeking around the woman's coat, her tight grip reassuring me, I saw him walk slowly out and hold his hands up, fingers spread to show he was not carrying a weapon. He was shot anyway. 

                "Shoot me, bastards!" he continued without missing a step. The bullet had torn through his right shoulder. Blood seeped through his jacket sleeve. He looked half crazed. 

                I hoped the soldiers behind the barricade thought so. 

                "You've killed my son!" he shouted, moving slowly, hands still raised at the barricades. Kneeling by the bodies of the four, now none of them moving at the barricade, he placed one hand on the forehead of the boy who had been clutching at his stomach. 

                "Oh, _Jaysus_!" the woman holding me whispered. She grabbed me tighter around the neck. I was watching the group of paramedics being held at bay on the other side of the street by volleys of gunfire. 

                That was when the order was given and the Paratroopers began to move, climbing over the rubble barricade. A rifle was leveled at the wounded father of the dead youth at the barricade. He was made to stand and then arrested. 

                "Come on, love," the woman urged me. "We have to move. You don't want to get picked up by that lot."

                She took my hand and I was grateful to have someone looking after me. But I was reluctant to leave the spot where Charlie told me to wait. 

                The approaching trucks and soldiers spurned me into action and I was pulled along by the woman following the crowd through a car park that was empty and into an alley behind some flats. Between a garbage can and a fence I was crouched beside her and Father Bradley. 

                With the distance of shouting and the roar of the army vehicles over the barricade, I could also hear Bernadette Devlin in her bullhorn: "Sit down! If you sit down, they won't shoot you."

                I dismissed it. Did she know what they would and would not do?

                One young man coming to take refuge behind the garbage pales with me and the woman and Father Bradley fell face first, his knees didn't even buckle as a shot rang out somewhere from the upper part of the alley. 

                The look exchanged between Father Bradley and the woman assured me of nothing. We all knew that it would be minutes before the two Paras at the end of the alley were on us. 

                There were more footsteps from behind the fence and the sound of scaling on chain-links. Hopping lightly down behind me, hefting his medical bag with the Red Cross, Aidan appeared and placed a hand on my shoulder. 

                "Sirius," he said breathless. 

                I spun around with a wash of relief but could not speak. 

                "Charlie told me you were out here."

                More shouts from the other end of the alley and more scaling on the chain-links. We were joined by a girl in white robes, slightly bloody, blond pigtails, a medical bag as well. 

                "He's been shot," I said finding my voice, pointing to the youth bleeding just beyond the curb. 

                "Stay put. I'll be back," Aidan said. "You can stay with Father Bradley. He'll take care of you."

                I looked to the father who nodded earnestly and then twisted around in his crouched position to search for an escape. 

                "Come on Ebhilin," Aidan said. The girl followed, both crawling. 

                The soldiers were taking their time, obviously worried that they would fall under IRA snipers if they were careless. 

                Funny, though, there had not been many sniper shots from anonymous gunmen—and there wouldn't be in subsequent reports—all accounted fire came from the soldiers. No non-issue weapons had been fired. 

                Another ringing shot had come so close to me that my hearing became cotton in my ears and I was dazed. 

                Aidan fell forward on the youth they had been trying to save. 

*My source for the Bloody Sunday events is _Those__ Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, __Derry__, 1972 by Peter Pringle and Philip Jackson. (Grove Press, New York: 2000). For more information I also suggest the movie _Bloody Sunday_ (2002, Paramount). _

A/N: This story is by no means finished. The next chapter will wrap up Bloody Sunday and continue with the story of Sirius' school days and later life. I hope you do take the chance to read up on the outrageous events of January 20, 1972 in Derry. Its really is quite a story—a story that I by no means give justice to. 


	3. Never Turn Your Back On A Para

Disclaimer: Characters and situations of the Harry Potter series are the property of JK Rowling and associated companies. Some characters are my own and still others were actually participants in these events. My source for the facts presented in this story is from the research of Peter Pringle and Philip Jackson in their work, _Those__ Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, __Derry__, 1972_. The opinions expressed in this story are first hand accounts or strictly belonging to the author. The song _Sunday, Bloody Sunday _is the property of U2. 

Author's Note: Of the thirteen people who died, I felt they must be mentioned. As this is a fiction, some characters are involved that were historically absent. My character(s) that appear on the casualty list at the end will be denoted as such: *.  The first half of this chapter was written before the release of _The Order of the __Phoenix_and as I have been writing with a clear goal in mind, I will not be deterring from my original plan. However, some of the background that Rowling has given Sirius will prove very interesting and I am reworking some aspects of this to incorporate them. As of now, though, I will have to classify this story an A/U (as if it wasn't already slightly A/U to begin with). 

Chapter Three

Never Turn Your Back On A Para

And it's true we are immune 

_When fact is fiction and TV reality_

_And today the millions cry_

_We eat and drink while tomorrow they die…_

                Another ringing shot had come so close to me that my hearing became cotton in my ears and I was dazed. 

                Aidan fell forward on the youth that they had been trying to save.

                Ebhlin jumped with the sound of the shot, no doubt as shocked as I had been. She wheeled around in the crouching position that she had been keeping over the boy bleeding into the alleyway gutter. Facing down the approaching soldiers she shouted, "Don't shoot, Red Cross!"

                Further down the alley than I had expected the distant voice of the soldier came back: "Your white coats are great targets but your red hearts are even better!"

                I saw her face and the shock it held. Placing two fingers on Aidan's neck to check his pulse, she responded, "Are you mad?"

                I expected gunfire to answer her question. None came. 

                She did not wait for his response either. Leaning around me, over the two lying in front of her she asked, "How's it coming, Father?"

                I turned to the priest next to me to see what she had meant. 

                Trapped as we were behind those pails in the alley, Father Bradley had taken both hands to the job of untwisting the chain links of the fence our backs were up against. He had made a crude tunnel from the wire, smeared in places with his own blood from the desperate work. 

                "Nearly done," answered the holy man. "How goes your work, child?"

                Busy with his task, Father Bradley did not turn to see how it went for himself. 

                I glanced in her direction still. The woman next to me, all of us hidden for the moment from gunfire, was praying; a rosary twined in her fingers, moving from bead to bead with speed and alacrity. Ebhlin, Aidan's Red Cross partner, hesitated to answer when she saw that I waited eagerly for her answer. I saw the blood too, though Aidan had fallen face down, I knew her answer. 

                But a tug from the diligent Father pulled me away. 

                "You first, my son," he said, pushing me toward the hole in the chain link. "Make haste!" he continued forcefully, "They are upon us!" 

                Not wanting to leave Aidan behind, I meant to protest, but the Father's strong grip had thrust me out of the small place we were crouching and I now found myself kneeling, waiting for the others to escape behind me. 

                Father Bradley came out last and grabbed me roughly. He pulled me by the wrist as if I had been a rag doll until we had turned the corner of the alley. Ebhlin divided from us and soon afterward, the woman with the rosary had left. 

                "Get you home, lad," Father Bradley said when we had made a trip of two blocks at a pace that was likely to burst my lungs had it continued any longer. "Do not come back to that place. The soldiers will not hurt the dead. You need not worry about him."

                I felt sick at this pronouncement. 

                "Well?" Father Bradley asked, staring at me hard. "What do you wait for?"

                I blinked, hardly knowing that I was whom he was talking to. "I don't know my way," I stammered. 

                A sympathetic smile lighted the old man's face for a moment. "You're a little old to be losin' your way, son."

                I nodded but said nothing. 

                "Where do you live?" he asked, softening a bit. 

                "I don't live here. I'm staying with someone," I admitted. 

                His shoulders sagged and he looked as if he wanted to be rid of me. No doubt he wanted to get back to his parish, wherever that may be in this godforsaken city. "If I knew their names, child, perhaps I could point ye there?"

                "Lupin," I said slowly. I didn't want to be pointed anywhere. I couldn't go back there now. Not while Aidan lay bloodied to death in the alleyway, and I might have done something to help him. I couldn't tell Mae, who had been kind to me, that her son lay dead because of me. 

                The priest's face darkened. He knew them. He must have known Aidan. "I am…I am sorry, my son." He turned and made a distracted movement to leave. Turning to face me as if he had just now only seen me standing there, he pointed. "The Rossville Flats are just there. Safe journey to ye. Stay out of the way of the soldiers, do." And he left me there. 

                I looked over my shoulder and, indeed, now I recognized the building. I had sat up there on that ledge last night with Margaret. A shudder went through me and I thought perhaps I should go to wait with Aidan until someone came for him. 

                But no. There were two soldiers there. 

                I beat a hasty path up to the Glenfada Flats car park, or at least that's what the sign read. I wouldn't have known where I was. But I saw the spire of St. Eugene's and my heart lifted a little for the only moment that day, a day filled with many more terrible moments. Without even feeling it, my feet immediately took me there, a lost sheep to a shepherd's crook. 

                Maybe an hour or two I sat without moving on the steps of the cathedral, not a movement disturbed the stillness. A book I had read once came bidden to my mind. I don't doubt that the scene had relevance, but thinking back on it, thinking about a book I read when so much was going on around me, seemed absurd. I wondered, hearing the shouts, pleas, curses, cracks of periodic fire, the roar of army trucks down civilian streets; had the participants of the 1830 revolution in Paris heard some of the same noises, distant or near? Had they felt the fear that had wracked me when the sappers broke through the makeshift barricade? Had any of them been as confused as I had about what all of this was for? Where there any heroes that couldn't decide on what side of the barricade they should rightly be?

                I had no answers for myself. It was more of an exercise in calming my breathing and my heart rate to ask myself distracting questions. But now I desperately wanted the answers to them. I felt that my actions, the experiences I had just had, were of little value. I could not accept that I had been in the thick of all of this if not for some purpose. The purpose was growing ever present in my mind. It told me that I should become acquainted with the world. What is the world? I asked myself. 

                The answer came back in terrifying earnest. 

                What you hear is the world. 

                I listened. The fire had ceased but the ambient noise of a battleground did not cease several blocks over. Then the sound of voices: a grave voice of a girl in a white robe, a bag slung over her shoulder. There was a boy in glasses and shaggy long hair with her. 

                I held my breath and tried to focus closer on them as they passed the steps ahead of me. 

Aidan?

                I sat for a moment longer and studied them. 

                No. It was not Aidan, of course. 

                It was his friends Ebhlin and Charlie Glenn. 

                I sank back down to my step and looked away. 

                The sun was setting over the Inishowen. The wind was picking up and so I reached a shaking hand to zip my coat. And in the short space of time that I had looked away an army truck pulled up, just at the steps of St. Eugene's. 

                Two soldiers leapt lightly down before the truck was fully stopped and ordered Charlie and Ebhlin to stop. 

                "I'm with the Red Cross," Ebhlin stated and turned to continue on her way. 

                The rifle came from one Red Beret's shoulder. He did not aim it yet. 

                "You're under arrest," the first one ordered. "Stop I tell you!"

                Charlie and Ebhlin turned. 

                They did not see me sitting behind the truck watching on the second step from the top. 

                "Up against the fucking fence," he commanded. Laying a hand on Charlie's shoulder, he roughly shoved him to the chain link on the opposite side of the street from mine. Charlie made no protest. It struck me then that maybe this hadn't been the first time he had taken part in similar scenes. 

                No one touched Ebhlin, probably because she was Red Cross—Protestant, that is. "You too. Up against the fence."

                "I'll never turn my back on a Para," she replied with a defiant raise of her chin. Sterner stuff I had never seen from any other girl. Her green eyes glinted as she stared. Her pigtails in Irish red made her slightly comical to the soldier. 

                "I'll shoot you!" He was inches from her face. To her credit, I never saw stern Hibernia flinch. 

                "You'll have to do it from the front, sir," she growled barely moving her lips, so tightly were her teeth clenched. 

                Roughly he hauled her to the truck by her elbow. 

                Charlie made a move toward her, easily knocked back into the chain links that sang like coins falling with the impact. Suddenly I was on my feet, moved by some stupid thought that Aidan's friends needed me. What could a twelve year old do?

                I never thought of anything but charging across the street and flinging myself at the Red Beret and knocking it from one stunned lieutenant's head. With a curse, he dropped his weapon, stunned. I hung on to his shoulders, never letting him get his arms behind him to pull me off. A third Para came from the back of the truck. He allowed me a small struggle with my adversary for a moment, helping to load Ebhlin and Charlie into the full truck before pulling me from the back of his comrade, laughing and nearly doubled over with amusement. 

                I tried at one last contemptuous kick and was knocked against the head with a gloved fist for it. 

                "Little bastard," the lieutenant said, wiping a spot of blood from his mouth. 

                I hoped that I had done the damage. Probably not. 

                "Put him in with the others. He'll see the inside of Fort George with the rest of the fucking wogs!"    

                Inside of the four-ton army truck, I was shoved to my knees against Charlie, crouched in a similar position. His hands were bound behind him, as Ebhlin's were bound in front as she knelt beside him. Mine, however, had not been tied. I was slightly frustrated by this. I was no threat to them—that was what not being tied meant. 

                The lieutenant slid into the truck beside me, sitting on the bench that lined both sides with his comrades, the one that I had jumped next to him. 

                We prisoners knelt, each one placed facing the front, the next one crammed in behind until we formed two rows. I looked around, noted Ebhlin's seething visage of defiance, Charlie's face appeared very calm. He reminded me in that moment of the poster of Martin Luther King, Jr. that Remus had hanging over his bed at school. There was passion, and there was anger, but nowhere on his face was there a line of vindictiveness, of blinding rage. 

                There was none of the suggestion of violence on his face, that is, until the Para that I had jumped leaned his rifle between his knees and touched a hand to the floor of the vehicle. He put his fingers to Ebhilin's cheek and smeared blood on her face. I realized as he did this there was blood all over the floor; we were kneeling in it, a few centimeters of it. I lurched and almost lost my balanced. Charlie was struggling at his bonds, carefully watching the soldier with Ebhlin. 

                "You know," the soldier said as he traced a bloody finger across her freckled cheek. He turned a crooked smile to his mate and then laughed, looking again at Ebhlin predatorily. "We must have killed at least fifty people today."

                Ebhlin turned a brief cold glance on the man. There was blood on her own hands, bound so tight they must have had little circulation. It was Aidan's blood, some, I imagined. She held them up defiantly, turning her face on the man. "Do you think you're dealing with a bunch of ignorant wogs, lieutenant?" She spat the last word like an insult. 

                He leaned inches from her face and moved his bloody hand from her cheek to her throat, grasping hard enough to cut her air supply. "You lot are worse than fucking wogs!" he sneered, thrusting her backwards into Charlie, knocking him over as well. 

                The two men filled the back of the bloody transport with raucous peals of laughter. When they both had caught their breath again, he followed this up with, "If you don't shut your fucking mouth, you'll be eating soft food for a month," fingering the rifle placed between his knees for effect. 

                "It's all right, Sirius," Charlie said close to my ear, picking me up off of the bloody lorry floor and setting me back on my knees that now began to ache as the truck bounced along the streets and out of the town. "It's not a nice place, where we're going. So I need you to stick closed to me, okay?" he said urgently, looking up every few syllables to check that the Paras did not take notice of him. 

                "Where're we going?" I asked slowly and ominously. My acquaintance with living nightmares had expanded so far in just a few short hours that the realm of possibility that lay within the words "not a nice place" seemed too vast to fully comprehend. 

                "Fort George," answered Charlie. 

                "Just stick with Charlie, love," Ebhlin said, taking one of my shaking hands in both of hers. I focused on the rough twine that circled her wrists, paying attention to the coarse feel, the smooth skin of her palm, the blood warm between her fingers and mine. I was unaware of how long it took to actually get to Fort George. My exercise in tuning out the soldiers and the pain in my knees, the bitter CS gas in my lungs, focused as I was on Ebhlin's hands had made the trip shorter. Only when I was handed down from the lorry by the same guard whose nose I had bloodied, did I wish that the trip had taken longer. 

                Out of the relative safety of the lorry, I was now met with the sight of high barbed-wire fences all around me, dogs viciously growling and straining at their leashes in the hands of guards who looked as if they would enjoy nothing more than letting the beasts on us. I recognized the Royal Ulster Constabulary in uniform, a bit of home familiarity where everything else was frighteningly new to me. They were not shouting at us as the rest of the soldiers were. The Paras roughly threw Charlie down next to me, but were minimally gentler with Ebhlin. She was separated from the rest of us and was taken past the guards with another woman, the only other woman on the transport. 

                Charlie seemed to be less worried about where they were taking her than I was. I took this to be a good sign that she was safe for the moment and so was a little easier to see her go myself. There was little time, however, to stare after her and Charlie ushered me ahead of him where the men were being led between two rows of shouting soldiers, screaming at the tops of their voices, and we could hear the dogs not so far away barking fiercely. For all the world this is still what I think hell must sound like. 

                The two lines of paratroopers were wielding batons, rubber hoses and rifles, waited eagerly for our lorry to be unloaded and for us to be corralled between them. Charlie was bent over me as much as possible to take the blows that were meant for both of us. The butt of a rifle connected with his thigh. In front of me an older man with a large cut at his hairline was struck with a baton, lacerated again and again with a hose. A few times I felt the blows reach me. One nearly knocked me over—a fist against my cheek, I guessed it was. All the while Charlie forced me forward and nearer the entrance. I was unsure how long the line of Paras and their lighting agile weapons could last. I was dizzy with all of the hazing; I didn't remember making it through the gauntlet. I was given a hefty shove through the doors, Charlie following. The bleeding man before me, Barry Liddy, Charlie finally informed me, was collapsed on the ground, lethargically trying to pull himself up under the motivation of a violent baton-swinging soldier. 

                We were all forced spread eagle against a wall, a cold wall, some relief to my stinging cheek. Everyone of us was searched, systematically made to remove each item of clothing as if we were hiding incendiary devices under our very skin. Even then, blows did not cease to fall on us. Next to me, Charlie was becoming increasingly concerned for Barry Liddy. He was now being propped against the wall, rather than standing of his own free will. A stinging feeling seemed to slice my bare back into two equal parts; a rubber hose had been introduced to the skin of my back and my shoulders. Two boys about my age were receiving worse, four people down the wall from me and I became thankful that the hose was all that was stinging me. 

                The command was given and we all turned. My back was now given the cool surface of the wall. When one of the boys, the fourth down from me, turned he was kicked in the groin and doubled over with the pain. I stood a little straighter and looked forward. I could hear him being pulled to his feet and made to stand. Charlie tensed next to me. 

Not long afterward we were given our clothes and a command to put them back on. I was quick about it, not wanting to be caught by a baton at unawares, plus, the cell wasn't heated and so a jumper and some trousers were welcome comfort. But we remained rigid against the wall, waiting for the soldiers that brought us in to give their statements and to identify us. I didn't look anywhere but forward, at the opposite wall, for fear of a renewed hiding. I remember wondering if the RUC here in Derry was the same as that in Belfast. If so, they had forgotten themselves, for they didn't even attempt to stop the Paras' abuse of the prisoners. I didn't think it could get much worse. 

Identification seemed, to me, a farce. The soldiers sort of peered at us once we were all herded into a cell. Through the bars they seemed to point and pick people at random. A Lance Corporal pointed to Father O'Keeffe, and seemed to be embarrassed when O'Keeffe was identified as a priest. "Why aren't you wearing your dog collar?" the soldier asked gruffly as his mates gave a sort of muffled snicker. "I wear my fucking uniform and so should you."

"Would it have made a difference?" O'Keeffe replied coolly. 

There were no specific details to accompany the accusations of Charlie Glenn and Sean McDermott, another of the Knights of Malta, no time or place. Details that were offered by the soldiers were sketchy at best. When the Identification was completed, we waited in the same position against the wall for processing or release. I estimated that it was around eight o'clock in the evening before one of the RUC finally uttered the words, "At ease!" 

Now we were allowed to lean against the wall rather than stand rigid, as we had for hours—two of those hours spent at attention naked. 

As I blinked blood out of my eye, Charlie stepped forward and addressed the RUC officer. "Sir," he said, edging closer to the bars, "Permission to attend that man." He pointed to Barry Liddy, slumped against another prisoner. He had been relieved of his paramedic's bag and his glasses during the search and I had no idea how he intended to help the man. He was identified as Lance Corporal Glenn of the Knights of Malta by the paratrooper that had lied saying he was picked up for being among a group throwing rocks, and the guard considered this for a moment.

"Denied, Lance Corporal," the RUC guard said, giving the bloody and despondent Liddy a cautious glance before leaving his partner to look after the prisoners as he moved to a neighboring room. He returned with an army doctor, unlocking the cell. Liddy was lifted up from the floor by the guards and left with the doctor. 

Everything was quiet for an hour or so. 

Next to me, my only friend, Charlie, sat still when we were given permission to do so. He was looking over his slashed forearm. 

"Thank you," I heard myself say in a small voice. I don't know where that came from. I hadn't even thought to say thank you, though it was very appropriate for all of the care this stranger had shown me. 

Charlie turned and the corner of his mouth twitched up into the ghost of a smile. 

"Don't mention it. It's my job," he said. As an afterthought he added, "You're not Catholic, are you?"

I shook my head and then looked around hastily as if I had just let a dirty secret slip. I opened my mouth to speak and then shut it just as quickly. "You've been here before?" I blurted out the next second. 

Charlie nodded sadly. 

                "Remember what you've seen here, Sirius," he said after a long pause. "This is what happens when people are so full of hate they forget to be human."

                I couldn't say anything and so nodded again dumbly. 

                I was released with Charlie around midnight. He demanded to be escorted out of the compound by the RUC guard and safely past the Paras and the dogs. 

                He walked with me to the bridge where I had been standing that morning with Remus. It seemed like days ago, not hours. A sick, sinking feeling filled my empty stomach as I thought about my friend and how I would be the one to tell him his brother was dead. 

                Charlie clapped a hand on my shoulder and pointed me toward the Rossville Flats. A moment later he asked, "Do you want me to come with you?"

                "No," I said weakly. "I can go on my own."

                He smiled a fleeting smile and shoved his hands in his denim jacket, reminding me of Aidan. "Of course you can, mate." He turned and left me at the bridge.

                I leaned over the side gingerly. My back, legs and arms had been lacerated and bruised by a rubber hose; every limb was stiff with the day's exertions. I heaved a very tired sigh and wondered how long it would take me to get home if I hitchhiked. 

                "Sirius!" I heard an overjoyed, nearly hysterical voice call from behind somewhere. 

                I turned to see Catherine approaching at a run.              

                "Sirius! Thank the Virgin!" she exclaimed throwing her arms around me. I bit my lip to keep from yelling out as she squeezed my tender shoulders tightly. 

                "Let's get you back. We're all worried about you. Your mother will want to know you're safe. Have you seen Aidan?" Catherine seemed not to draw a breath since she had first called my name. I wished more than anything that she would shut up now. 

                I didn't answer her. It was all over now. I would have to go back with her and explain to Remus and to Margaret and Mae that Aidan had died trying to get the others and me out of the alley. And my mother was waiting for me. She would be angry with me, of course. I could see the disappointment on her face before I even entered the front room of the flat.  

                My mother let out a startled scream and ran over throwing her arms around me. Again, I was nearly driven to my knees with the pain of the embrace. I could feel the cotton of my undershirt caked with dried blood grinding against the sores on my back and opening them anew. Tears of pain tricked from the corners of my eyes, washing trails where the blood had stained my cheek. Mum saw this and gasped. "My love! Did I hurt you?" She kissed my wounded cheek with great care and apologized over and over. No matter how much I wished to grow up, to be thought of as a man rather than a boy, Mum's great attention to healing my hurts was never discarded. That made me a great mamma's boy, I knew. At the moment the thought never crossed my mind. 

                Over Mum's shoulder I saw Remus and Margaret kneeling at the small shrine of the Blessed Virgin at the entryway of the small flat. Remus didn't look up when I had come in. I guess he knew that it had been me, not Aidan who'd walked in and, apparently, it wasn't a relief to him. Margaret stayed in the same attitude of prayer, but her lids fluttered open and she looked at me without raising her head. Her look was dark and it spoke far more than words could have communicated. 

                "Come, Sirius. Let's go home," Mum said, standing abruptly, a shaking hand grasping mine possessively. Turning to Mae she offered, "I hope Gerald can find your boy. Our thoughts and prayers are with you." She swept me from the room immediately and out the door. 

                I fell asleep with my head in my mother's lap as we rode home in a taxi. The scent of her perfume calmed me and lulled me into unconsciousness. She did not speak and so I didn't feel the need to explain myself to her just yet. 

                It was still dark when my mother roused me and I climbed sleepily up the stairs to our flat above the bakery. It must have been sometime in the early morning. O'Roark was starting to bake the day's selection and I could smell it wafting outside of the shop. 

                The next sound that woke me was my mother's gasp as she pulled my jumper and my shirt up over my head and first saw the marks that Fort George had left on me. 

                "I shall write to Prime Minister Faulkner about this!" she said snappishly, brushing my hair away from my forehead to sponge some blood from my cuts. 

                "No, mum!" I answered, mumbling with the effects of deep sleep. "He doesn't care. And neither did you until I was involved!" I didn't mean to sound so accusing, but I felt that I had been deliberately left out of a conflict that was happening all around me. I was shocked at what I had found out that day in Derry. But I would never ignore it again. I was angry that I knew nothing. 

                "I do care," Mum said, hurt. "I care about Mae and Gerald's boy. I care about their children, Remus and Margaret. No child should have to live like that. That's why I did what I did."

                "What?" I asked angrily. "Is that why you complained at the school that kids were beating me up everyday? So they could beat me twice as hard the next day for being a snitch? Is that why you never let me outside? Is that why I never had any friends? Why we always move around?"

                "Sirius," Mum said wearily, "you don't understand, lamb. I want to keep you safe. There are a lot of people out there that want to hurt you. Like you were hurt last night." She folded my bloody shirt, I didn't see why. She would probably have to throw it away. That blood wouldn't come out. She wouldn't look into my eyes, though I glared angrily at her. 

                "It's my fight, too. Remus is my friend and Ireland is my country, too," I growled. 

                "Lamb, I wish you could understand," Mum said patiently, tucking her bare feet under her as she crouched on the tile of the bathroom floor while I sat on the rim of the tub violently seething for reasons that I couldn't fully explain. "Your name will probably turn up in the paper. We'll have to leave. We'll have to find someplace else to live."

                My anger melted at this sudden pronouncement. "Why?" I asked with stunned wide eyes. 

                "Don't ask me that just yet, my love. I can't explain." She stood and pulled me to my feet, pushing a shirt down over my head and arms, the top two buttons unbuttoned to let my head through, just like she did when I was five. "Come now, Sirius lamb. Time for bed."

                She turned the light out and pushed me through the door and down the hall. "Come on. Get in," she commanded gently, turning down my bed for me. I climbed heavily in, considerably stiff. Mum began to tuck my covers around me and kissed my forehead. Under one arm with my bloody and sodden clothes was tucked a paper. I imagined that it was today's, just delivered as we got in. It was probably there. A huge story. Or maybe things like this happened too often to make the news. I didn't know. I had always lived blind to the world, I was now realizing. 

                Mum made to turn out the light in my room. 

                "No, mum!" I shouted, alarming myself. "Don't leave me."

                Mum turned, surprised. She stared for a moment and dimmed the lights, not turning them out completely. She climbed under the covers beside me and I tucked my head under her chin as she gathered me into her arms. 

                She laid the paper down on her lap. It was there on the front page: A list of the casualties of what the media was referring to as Bloody Sunday. The Casualty Roster read:

                Patrick Joseph Doherty

                Gerald Vincent Donaghy

                John Francis Duddy

                Hugh Pius Gilmore

                Michael Gerald Kelly

                Aidan Francis Lupin*

                Michael Martin McDaid 

                Kevin Gerard McElhinney

                Bernard McGuigan 

                James Gerard McKinney

                William Anthony McKinney

                William Noel Nash

                James Patrick Wray

                John Pius Young

                I closed my eyes. So Aidan's family knew he was dead now. 

                I fell asleep to the sound of my mother's voice as she hummed the _Irish Lullaby._


	4. A Sort of Homecoming

Disclaimer: The characters and places of the Harry Potter series belong to JK Rowling and associated companies. I am making no money from this story. _A Sort of Homecoming_ is the musical property of U2. The dream sequence was a bit Steinbeck inspired.

Author's Note: I feel I must explain to my post Book Five readers now. I began writing this thing before the almighty number five came out. I had a vague concept in mind that sort of fleshed itself out as I began to write. Obviously, any track that I found myself on became derailed somewhat in the aftermath of the last book. In being a narrative about the one character that we learned the most about in new canon, I have had to rework some things. Luckily for me (because I am lazy) I had not gotten too far in my writing that this was not possible. I am continuing with my original plan: no father as of now; single, Muggle mother; shy, introverted, unaware kid. And you're thinking, Hey! That's one-hundred and eighty degrees from the Sirius I know from canon. I'm not going to continue reading this A/U rubbish. Pleas don't. I assure you that this story will merge in the near future with canon. I promise that. Short from laying out the entire plot right here in an author's note, that's as much reassuring as I can do.

Chapter Four

A Sort of Homecoming

The city walls are all pulled downtc "The city walls are all pulled down" The dust, a smoke screen all around 

_See faces ploughed like fields that once_

_Gave no resistance_

_And we live by the side of the road_

_On the side of a hill_

_As the valley explodes_

_Dislocated, suffocated_

_The land grows weary of its own_

Images came lethargically to my mind that night my mother sang me to sleep. At first those images seemed familiar, like they had been stored there in an attic chest of memory and had since begun to collect dust.

There was a street—gray, foggy and deserted. It could have been any street in any town in Ireland.

I was there.

I could see myself there; a vague dawning in me that I was looking at myself more than a recognition that you meet with everyday at the mirror.

But just as suddenly as I had been placed on an empty street, a throng of people filled all of the spaces around me, ahead of me. I had a feeling in me that suggested I was crowded and being corralled to one end of the street; but I had no idea of panic or fear or discomfort at the crowd or because of them; only the idea that they were pushing me, leading me, compelling me in a direction that it was all too right that I should be heading in.

So small was I that I would have had to reach high for my father's hand. I realized this only when I looked around a moment later and realized that I could not find him. He was not there, but I must have expected him to be, that was why I searched the crowd.

Among the colors, the cries and the crowd I, wee little boy, moved along as the crowd carried me like a torrent, feet scraping the cobbles of some well-known street. It finally emptied out into a square like a wild and feverish river whose origins lie in the melted ice of a mountain into a calm, mirror lake.

And as the water of people bubbled and surged themselves into calm, spreading out over the square, it was then I saw the angry gray background of the sky. The gallows in front of the petered crowd outlined a horrible clue as to the purpose of the crowd and that vengeful attitude. Two noosed ropes hung, swinging slightly, from the wooden crossbeam.

I was alone, and becoming frightened, shoved and compelled here and there by the water of people, closer and closer.

Maybe I tried to turn and force myself back, against the current, the way I came, against the flood-wave of people up stream, up the street. Maybe I couldn't. Maybe I wanted to stay.

The faceless wave pushed with an insistent passion, on and on, toward the swinging ropes.

A group of dark haired, dark-hatted persons climbed the steps of the hastily built wooden structure, elevating themselves above the water-crowd. At their midst were two figures.

I fought hard not to look into the condemned faces, and still, I curiously wanted to catch a glimpse, without horrible conviction that surely would follow.

One of the condemned was a man.

The other, the silhouette of a child.

Both pairs of wrists were bound unceremoniously, mercilessly.

The man—no he still had hints of childhood about him, too—was put into his noose.

I took a breath, whether to shout out an objection, or to steady my heart, I could not tell. I opened my eyes and he caught them. They squeezed at my heart, panicking me.

The eyes were gray, shaggy blond hair half-shading them.

The face was Aidan's.

The second, the child—a girl was lifted into her noose next. I could not catch her look. I was absorbed in Aidan's judgment.

Aidan blinked and whispered, "The letter, Sirius. You must understand. You cannot be angry."

When I awoke on the first occasion of that dream I was sitting upright on the train from the city. My mother was next to me, staring at me with obvious concern. It was two days since I had left Derry and my friend, Remus. That was perhaps the longest bit of sleep I'd had since then. Every time I closed my eyes, however, my sleep was interrupted by images and sounds. This time it was not of the Derry riot that I had been part of on Sunday. This was a real dream, a dream that would recur many times in my later days and years.

"Was it another dream, love?" my mother asked.

I wanted to reply bitingly and with venomous sarcasm. She had taken to asking obvious questions that I felt too irritated to answer. I was getting the sinking feeling that my mother was becoming afraid of me. It never occurred to me at this time that she was in fear of something else—something lurking behind us.

She leaned around the seats of the train cabin. Others in business suits and travel coats were swaying in their seats with the motion of the train and otherwise paying no attention to us. I tried to look over my seat as well to see what she was looking for. The aisle was clear, as the street had been clear, as the curb outside our door had been clear. There was no one there. My mother seemed to think that there was something worse to fear in the empty corridors and streets and aisle ways than paratroopers and IRA vigilantes. She was more alert now that ever.

I remembered, staring at my own rocking reflection in the dingy glass of the railway car, that I had received a grilling like no other after stowing away in Remus' trunk and consequently getting myself hauled to a military prison. I cringed every time I said that to myself. How could I explain what I was thinking or why I did it? But she never asked why I had done it. She never interfered. And she had every right to. She only asked me if my picture had been taken inside Fort George or if any member of the press had talked to me. She kept repeating herself after I would answer dully. Always, her urgent voice was asking, "Are you sure, Sirius? Are you positive you talked to no one?"

She was nervous when I had informed her that my name was asked of me when I entered the compound. She was almost furious with me—a fury that had before remained blissfully nonexistent. And now she was watching both of our backs.

Mother spoke now, turning back to me after surveying the other passengers on the train. She clutched the paper covetously in her hand and guarded it carefully from me, as if I had not yet learned of the death of Remus' brother. As if she could spare me the details. She had remained clueless of the fact that I collected every page that said anything about Derry when she'd consigned them to the waste paper bin. "You'll be safe once you're back at school, to be sure."

"Safe from what, mum?" I asked, straining to keep my voice even. "What have I done? What did I do wrong?"

"Sirius," said mum in a whisper. "Now's not the time to be having this conversation. You can't understand what this is all about. Maybe someday—."

My mother tried to finish but her words trailed off and it sounded like an abrupt end.

"Maybe someday what?" I spat. The lady across the aisle from us began to take an interest in our conversation. Perhaps her interest only existed as far as our volume concerned her sleeping daughter whose head lolled on her lap.

Mother shot a penitent look at the other mother and turned back to me. "Lower your voice please and do be respectful, Sirius," she said properly.

I lowered my volume dutifully and continued, "Maybe someday I'll understand what happened, why he was shot while trying to help us, why Remus…" I trailed off and turned from my mother. She did not know his condition and it wasn't my place to tell her. I wanted to say something about his goodness and fairness. And for all of the bad in me there was twice the good in him. He would not have snuck out of school and nosed around in other people's business and gotten into trouble and make his mother worry the way I was worrying mine now. She would not understand that, I was sure. My next words were flinty and cold. "Maybe my father could have explained it to me." I looked away toward the window. I had wanted to wound her as she was wounding me. She was never accustomed to keeping things from me. She was always certain I could handle the truth and so I had become accustomed to having the truth. Because she was being withholding, I felt I could not be. I let her have it.

Her hand resting placating on my forearm slowly removed to her lap and moments later she turned and said hoarsely, "I'll be right back, Sirius. Don't move. I'll only be a minute."

When mother came back she had a fresh coat of lipstick on and a smile hitched to her touched up face. I felt awful that I had made her cry. But I would not budge one solitary inch. I felt betrayed by her.

There were no more words on the last leg of the journey. I walked beside her through the dusk colored streets of Hogsmeade where we had made our last train switch. I had one cold hand in my mother's warm and gloved one. I gave it an apologetic squeeze when we reached the heavy oak doors of my school; afraid that I might not have an opportunity to tell her I was sorry for quite a while.

To save me the trouble she looked down and squeezed my hand in return and murmured, "I know, Sirius."

I left her with Professor McGonagall at the bottom of the stairs and was instructed to meet my housemates at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. As I passed through the giant oak doors I turned and smiled at my mother. She returned it with a wave and a reassuring nod. She disappeared up the stairs with my Head of House and I turned quickly to see if my friends had noted my return and if so had they seen my warm interactions with mum? I was sure to be teased about the wave later. It did not matter in the slightest. I felt safer now than I had in quite a while.

There was another incident connected with my foolish escape into Remus' troubles. Aside from the fact that the Sunday riot had been in every Muggle paper and every Muggleborn student had informed every non-Muggle student about my and Remus' involvement, I had received a letter from one I had never expected to speak to nor hear from again. This came about two months after the Derry riots, the address written on the envelope from that very city. My heart jumped and then plummeted with a sick feeling of warning. While Remus and I were dropping our books off for our midday break and lunch, the envelope caught my eye as it cast a long shadow across my pillow from the noonday sun that spilled in from the adjacent window.

"Coming then?" Remus asked behind me, standing at the door. He was in a good mood today, whereas most days he was sullen and drawn into himself.

"I'll," I said, picking up the folded paper. "I'll meet you downstairs directly," I said, following it with a lie: "From my mum." I showed him the note and he nodded without interest.

Once Remus had disappeared I shut the door behind him. Resting on the edge of his bed my eyes wandered past the envelope and I wondered at the sender and potential subject. Remus had not mentioned much about his family since January and I certainly did not press him. More to the point I had not heard Remus mention anything about his sister Margaret, yet here was a letter from her addressed to me. I reread the envelope many times over, not trusting the assumption that because it was laying on my bed that it was for me. Owls were accurate for delivering post, but not always that accurate. But it did not say Remus.

I hesitantly pulled back the flap and removed the few folded sheets. The handwriting was neat, the spacing very even. It reminded me of Remus' many assignments that he had always asked me to read over (even though they were normally flawless). His sister definitely possessed the great attention to detail and seriousness of penmanship that her brother seemed to have as a rule.

I placed the envelope next to me on Remus' bed, careful not to lose it, fearing Remus might find it later and make assumptions.

Silly, the way that the letter was addressed sent a thrilling tingle through me. It read:

_Dear Sirius,_

Such a typical greeting for a letter—I never stopped to analyze it in my excitement. It could have meant nothing—it most likely meant nothing.

_I know that your address is the same as my brother's so it is no great difficulty that I write to you. It has been months and you will forgive me if I write to inquire after your health and happiness. _

I was taken aback by the rigidly formal feel of the letter. She had, after all, leaned boldly toward me and kissed me as I sat next to her on the roof of her family's flat. It seemed ages behind me and she seemed not to be the same Margaret. But it would be unfair to ask her not to change after so much had happened.

_I wish I could give better report to you, but the truth is my family is still in turmoil. We will continue to feel Aidan's loss. I am sure I am repeating many of Remus' sentiments. _

I found myself with a sardonic grin on my face. Remus was a revealer of nothing. He would continue to be the warmest of my friends, but he communicated very little. We all knew of his loss. But no one would dare discuss it.

_Aside from the fact that we miss him terribly we depended on him in many ways. Now that he is dead and at the hands of the government we have been compensated accordingly. So it seems in the eyes of the bureaucrats who mollify themselves by throwing money at the bereaved families. Well, all of this I say to inform you that because of the indemnity paid to my family I have been moved to a private school for girls in __Belfast__. Imagine, in life my brother was a hard worker to pay Remus' way through school. In death he has paid for my schooling as well and then some. I confess in a moment that I would rather live on the street and have my brother with me. So, c'est la vie! That's how things come to be. _

Through the cold and civil feeling of the letter I suddenly got the feeling that she wanted something from me. I scanned the letter quickly. I was eager to know how I could be of use to the sister of one of my best friends. If I had stopped to analyze it further I would have found other motivations for helping Margaret as well. But I am still not sure I had developed those feelings for her yet.

_ More to the point, Sirius, you must be bored with my letter by now. The current climate in __Derry__ stands thus: IRA vigilantes have swelled their ranks in the last month or two since the riot. Many have disappeared into their service. They have become an invisible but deadly force there. As it is, I will not be allowed by my family to visit my hometown for the Easter Break. My school will be desolate, as I fear I will be the only one staying behind. My parents plan on visiting me Easter Sunday. But, as I understand it, you also live in the city and so I invite you to come and see me as well. I have not been out of the school but I hear there's a lovely park a few blocks down. Or perhaps you could come around for tea. The short of it is that I would like to see you again, if you have no plans to the contrary. Please write to me with news of yourself and your mother. _

_ With love,_

_ Your friend Margaret_

I must confess that I was in excited shock. The prospect of seeing Margaret again thrilled me to where I leapt off of Remus' bed and almost left the telltale envelope lying out in the open. I wanted any of our future correspondence to be a secret from my roommates and, more to the point, her brother. The prospect of having further correspondence made me glad. Her letter had made me glad, though she seemed so lonely in it.

I read it once more and wrote a reply explaining to her very inelegantly that I was all right, aside from the harassment of one Lily Evans, an aspiring journalist who incessantly hounded Remus and me to give her the real story behind the Derry massacre. I confessed that I dodged her whenever I saw her, though Remus was quite a bit more polite. I was cautious in telling of my mother's fears. Remembering our trip on the train back to school and her constant watching over our shoulders, I decided to lie and say that we were both happy and in the best of health. With short ceremonial condolences for her brother and a promise that I would visit her on Easter Break I closed my letter with little of the affection that she had shown me.

Rereading my words I was displeased with the offhand and sometimes cold feeling communicated in them. But, pressed for time between school hours I addressed the envelope and with Margaret's opened letter I shoved it into a desk drawer and raced off to what was left of my lunch break.

It always comes as a shock to me when I catch a glimpse of the hollow face and eyes that now stare back at me from various reflective surfaces. I always feel a small lurch at the sight of myself. Azkaban was hell on earth. I hear the dogs of Fort George now, not only in my sleep, but in every waking moment as well.

But Azkaban does not steel your fond memories, it just dulls them. The hungry barking of the dogs, the shouts of the angry soldiers, the look of a betrayed friend coat those fond memories of walks through the park with Margaret, the feel of her cold fingertips on my electrified skin as she touched me for the first time that night on the rooftop. The sound of Remus' voice telling me we had all lost her finally blanketed all of the good things with a caustic layer of acrid pain that ached. Hell was my life when Margaret had left.

But before that there was my visit to her school on Easter weekend. It was a pain to get away from my mother. And she was certainly not invited to come with me. I didn't even mention that the person with whom I had a lunch date was a girl. It would have sent my mother into a tither of excited inquisition.

Leaving my mother preparing tomorrow's baked ham, I gave myself a cursory sweep in the baker's window. I was not pleased with how I had turned out, though I had taken every care to look presentable. My face had become somewhat gaunt with my stunted hours of rest each night since January. I wondered vaguely if Margaret would notice. And how much had she changed? I wasn't sure that my assessment of her in those two days I had known her was accurate enough to gage any difference, no matter how apparent it may be.

I wished I had left the tie at home. Jerking the knot loose I let it fall on either side of the buttons and decided that was how Aidan or Charlie, or anyone else cooler than me, would have rectified the situation.

Living in Belfast for most of my adolescent life I was familiar with where Margaret's school was, but like most boys I had never been past the gate. I had seen the blue plaid dresses and jumpers of its inhabitants on many occasions, always checking to see that the girl wearing the uniform was Margaret. It never was. Maybe she never got out. Still, for weeks before I was to visit her when I was home for a weekend I would never pass up the opportunity to walk this way in hopes of a clandestine meeting.

"Sirius!" came a sparkly voice as I was watching my feet instead of my progress down the sidewalk.

I looked up and it was Margaret pushing the heavy wrought iron gates apart. She ran out to meet me, her yellow skirt kicking up when her knees upset the hem. She stopped just in front of me, winded. And for a moment, neither of us knew what to do but grin.

True, I had planned this moment for two weeks, with varying degrees of subtlety ranging from a casual "How have you been?" to taking her in my arms and kissing her Humphrey Bogart style. I had not imagined this disaster.

"It's truly good to see you," Margaret said breathlessly.

I nodded with an inward cringe, all the while screaming at myself, _Talk you fool!_

She laughed and looked at her feet.

"I know in your letter," she continued, "you'd accepted my invitation but I still didn't expect you to come."

"Why on earth not?" I blabbed, reddening as I began to regret the surprisingly gushing sound of the question. I had imagined that I would have sounded more unconcerned and attempted to adjust my voice to reflect this preconceived persona of cool.

Margaret blushed. "Maybe you wouldn't want to after all."

"Of course I would," I answered, relieved at sounding more offhand, "you're my friend's little sister." And I looked away mentally kicking myself.

I pretended not to notice how crestfallen she looked at this pronouncement. I didn't not plan to say that at all.

"So," she said finally, recovering somewhat, "where do you want to go?"

I looked up at the sky. Wherever we decided to go it should be an indoors place. The clouds looked a heavy leaden color. I shrugged my shoulders and looked away.

She turned up the street attempting to hide a look of frustration that had no doubt crept into her features at my apparent disinterest. "There's a nice café on the corner there. At least I heard it was nice. Some of the older girls get day passes. We're allowed out on the weekends, but I don't go out much. I mean, I don't get invited to go places with the other girls." She turned red as she apparently didn't intend to let that information slip. "I mean, my friends are the type who would rather study than go out."

"So why don't you just go out on your own?" I asked trying to stop her embarrassed babbling.

"My parents won't let me."

We fell into stride together and into silence as well.

"I know what you mean," I replied finally.

"Huh?" Margaret asked reaching to pull up a knee sock. Apparently I had interrupted some internal conversation of hers.

"I don't get to go out much when I'm home," I clarified.

"Oh," Margaret said nodding. "Still angry with you, is she?"

I thought about my answer to this for a half a block. Margaret looked at her shoes, afraid she had touched a nerve.

"Not angry," I answered slowly. "She was just worried. It's just been me and her all this time and All we have is each other. We tell each everything." I stopped and looked away from Margaret. "Well, we used to, that is."

At this, her head jerked up and she looked hard at me–at the side of my face as I looked determinedly ahead of us.

"What's changed?" she asked.

I heaved a great sigh. I guess I had walked into this. And I wasn't as unwilling to tell her about it as I was with James or Peter or Remus. She looked at me with concern and not judgement. She had been through the same things as I had, I reminded my self–more or less the same things. "She's scared."

"Of what?" she asked flatly.

"I don't know," I answered truthfully. "She's always looking around us when we're out, looking behind us. At night she checks three different times to make sure the front door to our flat is locked."

Margaret raised her eyebrows and looked at me significantly. "Is she afraid that you'll be charged? You're only twelve, they couldn't..."

"Thirteen," I corrected her absently.

"Oh yes," she said nodding once. "Remus told me. February. Happy birthday–late." She grinned cutely, but I, absorbed in my story, ignored her. __

She pointed at the open air café on the corner two blocks from her school. I hoped we wouldn't be long. The weather was slowly becoming threatening. In the back of my mind I was thinking I would be ashamed to make my mother worry if I were caught in this. Well, she was probably worrying anyway.

"Two teas, please," Margaret ordered with a sweet smile and I gave a faltering smile of my own as to convince the waiter that tea was what I really wanted. I didn't, in fact want anything. Evenly, Margaret turned to me and said, "I didn't see much about you in the papers, apart from a mention of being the youngest arrested."

"That's it, though," I sighed, leaning back and pushing the front two legs of my chair off the floor. "She questioned me for two days about any reporters that I may have talked to, any cameras I had accidentally walked in front of, or anything like that. It's genuinely bizarre." I shrugged as the waiter came back with a small teapot and two cups on a tray. With one hand on the back of my chair he pushed the front two legs back to the floor and with the other deposited our order upon the table. I frowned at him.

"Why don't you just ask her about it?" Margaret shrugged and poured herself some tea.

I shrugged myself in answer. "She won't say. So I just try not to make her go off."

"Frustrating situation," she said finally, blowing distractedly.

I nodded and turned my head to watch the people passing on the street. I could feel her eyes on me, my ears felt hot. A dog walker passed and I tried to convince her that I was absorbed in the scene but suddenly she played her cards.

"Do you want to know why I asked you here?" she said evenly, sipping her tea.

"For the pleasure of my company, I s'pose," I said casually. I _did_ want to know, though.

"I know you were the last person to see my brother alive," she said without feeling or ceremony.

The two front legs of my chair hit the floor again and I hadn't realized my mouth was agape.

"Close your mouth," she said with a smile, setting her teacup down. "I was on the rooftop, of course."

"Why didn't you say anything before?" I asked, feeling angry and ambushed.

"Was it such a dirty secret?" she replied with her eyebrows raised. I was beginning to dislike the coolness with which she approached a subject that had haunted me for three months now. "Have some tea," she added, as if to nettle me just a bit more.

"I don't want any," I said with clenched teeth.

"What's wrong?" She sat up a little straighter and surveyed me. "Don't be angry with me. I haven't told anyone."

"I don't want Remus to know."

"He'll find out eventually," she shrugged.

"Yeah, if you tell him eventually," I answered heatedly.

  


"My, you're really bothered." She shook her head and lifted her tea to her lips again. "Have some tea," she repeated when she had lowered her cup.

"I don't want any fucking tea," I had said, sounding like Peter and probably imitating him a little.

She lowered her chin, a look of admonishing sternness on her face. "I just thought you would want to know. It's not something I hold against you."

"Well thank you," I said crossly, folding my arms in front of me. "The weather's starting to turn. I'll see you later," a said standing. "Happy holiday." I threw some coins on the table and pretended not to notice that she was offended and hurt.

But she caught up to me in the park. I turned around finally, not able to ignore her pleas for me to stop. I felt something inside of me catch as I watched her running toward me, her blond hair whipping her face as the wind turned gusty.

"Please stop!" she said once more catching me up. She bent and attempted to catch her breath.

"I have stopped," I said coldly.

As if on cue I felt the first drops of the afternoon showers we were accustomed to in the spring. I looked up and cursed under my breath as they began to spatter my cheeks.

"I'll make it quick then," Margaret said, obviously unhappy. She launched into her explanation though she had barely recovered from her sprint. "It hurts. I didn't expect it to hurt this much. But I just wanted to know what had happened down there. I mean, while I was on the roof watching." She was looking at me expectantly, hungrily. The rain had splashed her cheeks, but her eyes were red as well and I suspected that tears were beginning to mingle with the rain.

"They were shooting at people on the rooftops. They could have mistaken you for an IRA sniper."

"They were there too," Margaret sniffled and shrugged, folding her hands in front of her and endeavoring to hide a shiver. "My school's just up here," she indicated the tall gray building, dominating behind the stand of trees that bordered the other end of the park. "We could at least dry off." She looked at me hopefully and I tried to find a way to say no.

"Yeah, alright," I gave in softly. She took my hand and lead me through the dripping pines and oaks.

I can smile with fondness now. But I was terrified to be alone with her then.

"My roommates have all gone home for Easter Holiday," she stated as if to reassure her self while at the same time assuring me.

Pushing the door open she turned with a half smile at me. I put one foot over the threshold of her room. There were three beds, all of them made but one.

I felt like smuggled goods. I stepped back out of the room.

"What's wrong?" I heard spoken sweetly in my ear.

"Nothing," I answered.

"No one's here."

"I," I swallowed hard, "I can see that."

There are dry towels in the bathroom. She said, closing the door behind us.

I tried no to look nervous. I nodded and strode purposefully into the center of the room. There was a bay window in front of me, velvet curtains and a gunmetal sky hung on the wall.

Behind me Margaret rung out her hair and kicked off her shoes. She saw me staring and smiled, sitting on the carpet and pulling off a knee sock. There was nothing that suggested a planned impropriety about this scene. She nodded toward the bathroom.

With heated cheeks I turned and shut the door behind me, heaving a great sigh of relief, suddenly grateful for being out of her sight.

I jumped when a knock on the door startled me.

"Sirius," called Margaret from the other side of the door.

"Yeah," I called back when I had regained my self composure.

"There's a robe on the door," she suggested.

I looked at my wet jeans and shirt. Throwing off the tie I unbuttoned the garment sticking to my chest, my undershirt was damp underneath too. But I was resolved. I didn't want a situation on my hands that being half-naked in front of Margaret could escalate into. I settled for a middle ground and took my shoes and socks off. Grabbing a towel I rubbed at my dripping hair and pronounced myself dry.

When I opened the bathroom door everything was quiet and dim.

"Margaret?" I called softly. I looked but didn't see her.

"Over here," I heard her say. She was sitting on the cushions in front of the bay window in a robe, pulling on some heavy socks. "The rain will stop some time, hopefully," she added with a shy smile.

I looked at my bare feet. "Good, because I can't stay too long."

"I'm sorry about earlier," Margaret intoned hastily, picking at a fingernail. "I get that way sometimes. I don't know why."

"No," I said. "It's okay, really." I tried to sound cheerful and ended up sounding as nervous in front of her as I felt.

She grinned thankfully and made my stomach flip uneasily.

She drew a great breath as if to launch into a long and complicated speech, but faltered and let the breath out, pursing her lips as she blew out in a deflated sort of way. She started anew but didn't look at me. "It's like that night on the roof when I kissed you."

"Like what?" I asked, not following.

"I wanted you to think I had kissed a lot of boys. I try to sound offhand and flippant sometimes... sometimes when I'm nervous."

"Oh," I said lamely. "So, how many boys have you kissed," I asked taking a nervous step toward her.

"Just you, Sirius."

"I'm sorry," I replied with a dumb shrug.

Margaret actually laughed. She dissolved into loud giggles that I was sure attracted the attention of anyone left in the dormitories. "You're sweet," she said finally covering her mouth to stop the laughter.

I nodded, disappointed. I don't know what I had wanted her to think I was, but sweet wasn't the first thing I would have thought of. To rectify the deteriorating scene I moved toward her further, coming to stand directly in front of her, against her. I felt her gasp in surprise as much as I had heard her.

Thinking of how Aidan had bent under the street lamp that night to kiss his girl I slid one hand around Margaret's waist and squeezed her to me. I took a steadying breath and kissed her.

And why had I been astonished when I felt her react, kissing me back? She moved a hand up to my neck, fingers entwining themselves in my damp hair. Margaret lifted her chin and pressed my lips against her neck and we both shivered.

My other hand went to her face and pushed her wet and tangled hair from her face. The smell of her skin was sweet and hinted of spring rain, it encouraged me to explore other regions of her face, neck and collar bone.

When her hands came up to my shoulders and pushed my wet shirt from them I knew that this was the one moment given to us in which either one of us could call this off. But now neither of us wanted to.

For just one brief moment my hands seemed tied up as she struggled to pull the wet garment off of me. I pressed against her ever more earnestly as if to touch her with my lips if I could not do so with my hands. It would be absolute agony if I were denied this pleasure.

Margaret sighed a little in frustration and I left my pursuit of the graceful line of her neck for just a moment to help her with the sleeves of my shirt. As I struggled her hands were like electricity when they touched the bare skin just under my ribs, pulling my undershirt up over my head. I gasped, feeling a shock surge through me and my thoughts seemed to be singly bent on being as close to her as I could.

My fingers fought quickly and stubbornly with the tie on her robes.

She distractedly hopped on one leg and with one hand tried pulling her sock from her suspended foot, and simultaneously endeavoring to keep her lips locked to mine.

But when she abandoned the sock and went to my belt instead, my head became clear of the humid fog that had trapped my thoughts and froze them until now. In a panicked realization of how far I had let this go I grabbed both of her wrists roughly.

Her eyes snapped open and she stared at me. "Sirius, what's wrong?"

"We can't do this," I said quickly dropping her hands which fell like dead weights to her sides. Mine conversely flew to my belt and I fastened it again. Looking up at her I shook my hair from my eyes and said clumsily, "I want to, Margaret. But think about this. We're both too–we're not–not like this, I mean," I faltered, throwing my hands up in defeat.

"Oh," she said darkly, retying her robe and retrieving her discarded sock, "I see. I'm back to being your friends naive little sister. What was I when your hands were all over me?"

"You were...way too young," I answered feebly. I paced the floor quickly and sat with my head in my hands on the edge of her unmade bed.

She turned and followed me, heated by the indignity of my charge. "I'm only a year younger than you!" she shouted.

"I'm sorry," I answered hastily, holding out a hand to her. She stepped closer, her hands still folded angrily across her chest but she let me put my arms around her anyway. My head buried against her stomach and her fingers combing pleasantly through my hair seemed to calm us both and we remained this way for innumerable minutes. "That's not why you brought me here, is it?" I asked finally, an alarming scenario playing out in my head.

"No," she answered with a chuckle. I could feel her laughter with my forehead resting against her. "I was eventually going to get you to tell me about Aidan." Her fingers ran down my neck and then back into my hair. I shivered and looked up at her. She was grinning. "After I had my way with you," she finished.

I shook my head reprovingly. "Who talks like that?"

"I've been in a private school all my life. Don't you think I've got enough rebellious energy pent up?"

"Well your not going to use any of that repressed rebellion on me," I answered, pulling her down next to me on the bed. "What do you want me to tell you about Aidan?"

"How did it happen?" she asked, laying her head against my bare shoulder.

I drew my arm around her and took a deep breath. "I thought you were watching from the roof," I said vaguely, stalling to adjust my thoughts.

"Yes, but tell me what you saw," she said standing and moving to the head of her bed pulling the covers down and climbing in, as if preparing for a bedtime story.

"It was my fault," I said, standing rigidly next to her.

"Why would you say that?" she asked, adjusting a pillow. She moved over finally, holding up the covers invitingly for me to climb in next to her. "Don't be a prude, you must be cold."

"I'll leave a puddle," I said, indicating my still wet jeans. Convenient excuse, I appreciated it.

"You're being silly. I won't seduce you or anything," said Margaret exasperated.

I gave up finally and climbed in beside her, allowing her to draw the covers up to my shoulders. She propped herself up on one elbow staring at me. "Continue," she commanded.

"You're a strange one," I breathed, folding my hands and placing them under my head.

"Now that's the pot calling the kettle black," she said unenthusiastically.

"Well," I said finally, "I got lost. The gas had made my head funny and I didn't know where I was."

Margaret nodded. "I found you at Glenfada Park, just as you had ducked into the alleyway. Then I saw my brother."

I turned my head sideways to look at her while she spoke. When she finished I turned my eyes back to the blank ceiling. This seemed to help me think.

"He had jumped the chainlink with the Red Cross girl."

"Ebhlin," Margaret added helpfully. The rain against the window was making everything lethargically dull and dreary. She was wonderfully warm next to me. I felt a heavy weight settle behind my eyes.

She seemed to feel the same way. Her head fell slowly from her hand and rested on my chest so that all I could see was a mass of blond curls. As her hand came lightly to stay on the underside of my upper arm she amused herself by rubbing her thumb along the skin there.

"Yes, Ebhlin," I agreed. Yawning, I continued. I recounted everything up until Fort George, finally being released and subsequently Catherine finding me on the bridge. "And that's all that happened." I ended.

I had thought she was asleep but I finally heard a faint, "Thank you."

All throughout our town various scenes like this one may have been unfolding at the same moment. Others were discovering what kind of overwhelming solace there was in finding that one person who understands every inner-working of your mind. That person for me had been Margaret and in that brief afternoon and evening we had been together I had been my happiest self I would ever know. I missed that person now. Losing her was losing that part of me, that contentedness, happiness and wholeness.

True, perhaps great scenes of injustice and malice were also weaving themselves into the tapestry of lives in the city of Belfast that night. But none of it could touch either of us and therefore did not exist while we slept in each other's arms.

She awoke when the sun broke through the gray clouds midmorning. I had been awake for sometime before that, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders with each breath. I was glad that we had not taken things to the point that we might regret them. I was not regretting in the least the night that we had spent together.

"I'm hungry," she said finally. She sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. "Do you want me to bring us something from the kitchen?"

I shook my head. Pushing the covers off of me, all of my willpower was invested in moving away from her and collecting my strewn shirt and shoes. "No, my mum will be frantic. I've got to go."

Margaret nodded slowly. "I'll make sure it's safe for you to go." She pushed herself out of the bed and went to the door. Her hand came back through seconds later and beckoned me forward. I finished tying my laces and followed her.

At the gate I finally had to leave her.

I pushed it open, not looking in her direction, but down the street the way I had come yesterday.

I walked a couple of paces before something tugged inside of me, something warning. Turning, I saw her standing against the gate staring after me. Her face lighted with a smile and she waved.

I answered her wave and turned again to walk down the street. That same warning feeling came again and forced me to turn, striding the few steps, I rushed to her and kissed her once more, briefly and then finally walked the block and turned the corner. My gut was telling me I would not see her again for quite a while.

Just as I was climbing the steps past O'Roark's bakery and to my flat I felt that Margaret made things make sense for me. The past three months, the scenes from the riot eating at me, the lost sleep and the disturbing dreams had faded. I realized that I'd had a full night's uninterrupted sleep for the first time since January.

My smile and my weightless giddy feeling dissolved when I pushed the door to our flat open and saw my mum standing there in a rage, the front room disheveled and smashed as if she had taken a crowbar to the place. A letter was in her hand and her face was flushed and stained from crying. It was the start of a series of events that would cause my world to fall spectacularly to pieces.


End file.
